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KIRKWOOD, Mo. - A gunman with a history of acrimony against civic leaders stormed City Hall during a council meeting, yelled "Shoot the mayor!" and opened fire, killing two police officers and three city officials before law enforcers fatally shot him, authorities said.
The gunman, identified as Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton, critically injured the city's mayor and wounded a reporter Thursday night before law enforcers fatally shot him. He had previously claimed he was harassed and stifled in the past by city leaders.
"The only way that I can put into context that you might understand is that my brother went to war tonight with the people, the government that was putting torment and strife into his life," Thornton's brother, Gerald Thornton, told KMOV-TV of St. Louis.
Officials said the man had a history of disruptive behavior, and was convicted twice on disorderly conduct charges for acting out in the town meetings. Ten days before the shooting, Thornton had lost a federal lawsuit against this St. Louis suburb which he said harassed him and denied him his constitutional right to speak at the meetings.
Mayor among wounded
Tracy Panus, a St. Louis County Police spokeswoman, said the names of the victims would not be released until a news conference on Friday. But the wounded included Mayor Mike Swoboda, who was in critical condition late Thursday in the intensive-care unit of St. John's Mercy Hospital in Creve Coeur, hospital spokesman Bill McShane said. Another victim, Suburban Journals newspaper reporter Todd Smith, was in satisfactory condition, McShane said.
Panus said the gunman killed one officer outside City Hall, then walked into the council chambers, shot another and continued pulling the trigger.
Janet McNichols, a reporter covering the meeting for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, told the newspaper the meeting had just started when the shooter opened fire. He started yelling about shooting the mayor while walking around and firing, hitting police Officer Tom Ballman in the head, she said.
The shooter then went after Public Works Director Kenneth Yost, who was sitting in front of Swoboda, and shot Yost in the head, McNichols said.
She also said the shooter fired at City Attorney John Hessel, who fended off the attacker by throwing chairs. The shooter then moved behind the desk where the council sits and fired more shots at council members.
"We crawled under the chairs and just laid there," McNichols told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Friday. "We heard Cookie shooting, and then we heard some shouting, and the police, the Kirkwood police had heard what was going on, and they ran in, and they shot him."
Frequent council meeting visitor
Witness Alan Hopefl told CNN that Thornton was a frequent visitor at council meetings and would be disruptive, sometimes making donkey noises. Hopefl said he was there when the shooting erupted Thursday.
"They just opened up a public hearing, and the attorney was reading the document into the record when Mr. Thornton entered the room, went down one side of the room up to the police officer who's normally there, pulled the gun out, shot the police officer, and then he proceeded to move toward the front of the council," Hopefl said.
The newspaper quoted McNichols as saying Swoboda, and council members Michael H.T. Lynch and Connie Karr also were hit. She identified the gunman as Charles Thornton, whom she knows from covering the council.
The shooting was the latest in a number of such attacks across the United States. A man last Saturday fatally shot five women in a clothing store in an outdoor shopping center in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. He has yet to be located.
In December, a 19-year-old man opened fire in an Omaha, Nebraska, shopping mall, killing eight people and wounding four before committing suicide.
Thornton was often a contentious presence at it meetings; he had twice been convicted of disorderly conduct for disrupting meetings in May 2006.
Ire at mayor
Most of his ire was directed at the mayor and Yost, McNichols said.
In a federal lawsuit stemming from his arrests during two meetings just weeks apart, Thornton insisted that Kirkwood officials violated his constitutional rights to free speech by barring him from speaking at the meetings.
That case was tossed out on Jan. 28, with the judge saying that "any restrictions on Thornton's speech were reasonable, viewpoint neutral, and served important governmental interests."
Gerald Thornton told KMOV the legal setback may have been his brother's final straw. "He has (spoken) on it as best he could in the courts, and they denied all rights to the access of protection and he took it upon himself to go to war and end the issue," he said.
Kirkwood is about 20 miles southwest of downtown St. Louis. City Hall is in a quiet area filled with condominiums, eateries and shops, not far from a dance studio and train station.
Despite its reputation locally for serenity, the city has grappled in recent years with crimes that brought it unwanted attention.
Near City Hall is a pizzeria once managed by Michael Devlin, who kidnapped 11-year-old Shawn Hornbeck in 2002 and held him for four years before authorities rescued the boy in January 2007. Also rescued was Ben Ownby, another teenager Devlin abducted just days before Devlin's arrest.
Those crimes got Devlin life terms on state charges, as well as 170 years behind bars on federal charges that he made pornography.
City Hall also is about a block from a park now named for a former Kirkwood police sergeant and father of three who was killed by a man witnesses said blamed police for the death of his 12-year-old half-brother two hours earlier.
The man, Kevin Johnson, was convicted in November of first-degree murder and last week was sentenced to death.
"...the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
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