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ISSAQUAH, Wash. — Police killed a man suspected of firing multiple shots outside a high school east of Seattle on Saturday, local media reported.
Officers fatally shot the man after he refused to put down his weapon, a bolt-action hunting rifle, KOMO-TV reported.
No one else was injured.
The man, said to be in his 50s, was driving his car on Front Street when he stopped in the middle of the street, got out and started shooting, King County Sheriff’s Office spokesman John Urquhart told NBC station KING.
He proceeded to walk toward Issaquah High School and a nearby elementary school.
Police managed to surround him on a service road. He was still firing his weapon when he was shot by police, KING reported.
The man was shooting as he walked nearly a half mile and because of the confusion, there was initially some talk that there were other suspects, but that's not the case, Urquhart said.
"We don't know where he was going or why he was going there," Urquhart said, according to KOMO. "We never had a chance to negotiate with him, talk to him. He was shooting, and the officers shot back."
The gunfire chaos as spectators at an Issaquah High football game dove for cover under bleachers or fled to nearby streets.
Police, guns drawn, ran onto the high school's football field and hustled about 120 team members and fans to a safer position beneath the bleachers, where they hunkered down, witnesses told KOMO News.
Witnesses told KOMO they heard about 20 shots fired and saw at least one man armed with a handgun and rifle.
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"A SWAT team showed up on site, fully loaded, fully geared up, just racing onto the field," John Rudolph, a football coach, told KOMO.
Other witnesses said they saw a man outside the high school firing two guns.
Lindsay Schumacher, who was walking nearby with her baby, told KOMO she heard the shots fired and started running when a woman driving a Chevrolet Suburban came by and urged her to get in the car and drover her to safety.
"We were running from guns," Schumacher said. "That's not supposed to happen in Issaquah."
Another woman, Dawn Hill, told KOMO, "It was so close. It was like you didn't really think it could be gunfire right behind you."
Witness Tonya Collins may have seen the shooter, she told KOMO.
She said she was driving out of the high school parking lot when she saw a man armed with two weapons.
At first she said she didn't think much about it because there is a shooting range nearby, but then she began to realize that something was seriously amiss.
"He was walking very casually," she said. "He had a handgun in one hand and a rifle in the other hand, and he was just kind of pointing his gun around."
She said she saw the man point his gun at another woman and her son, but he didn't fire.
"He had a very weird look obviously. ... I had the sense he could shoot me," Collins said.
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