“Young 18-year gunman shot three people to death and wounded six others, including two police officers, in a northwest New Mexico town on Monday before police shot him dead outside a church after a short time,” police officials said.
As reported by Reuters, the late-morning shooting spree unfolded in a residential area of Farmington, New Mexico, about 180 miles (290 km) northwest of Albuquerque.
Police responded “to find a chaotic scene where a male subject was actively firing upon individuals in that neighborhood,” Baric Crum, deputy chief of operations for the Farmington Police Department, said in a news briefing hours later.
Farmington police spokesperson Shanice Gonzalez, said that three civilians were killed by gunman, and also six people were wounded including two police officers struck in an exchange of gunfire.
Gonzales continued to say that this happened before he was fatally shot by police.
On telephone Shanice told media that the suspect had stalked about a quarter of a mile on foot firing on bystanders seemingly at random before the rampage came to an end outside the church where he was confronted by law enforcement.
“We are still trying to determine why he was in this neighborhood,” Crum told reporters.
The gunman, identified only as an 18-year-old, was believed to have acted alone, police said. No information was provided about any of the dead.
Many citizens of new Mexico are claiming that this acts is becoming widespread.
Some of the incident was captured in video footage posted to the social media platform TikTok and confirmed as authentic by Gonzales.