F
Fu Xi
Guest
Man kills four in Spain shooting rampage
A 57-year-old Spanish builder who reportedly liked dressing up as a sheriff shot and killed four people including his former boss on Wednesday.
The man suspected of the four shootings is detained by police Photo: AFP
9:08PM GMT 15 Dec 2010
Armed with either a rifle or shotgun, he shot a father and son who were his employers in the mountain town of Olot, northeastern Spain, before driving his car to a bank where he killed two staff, a man and a woman, they said.
He surrendered shortly after the rampage, one of the worst recorded in Spain in at least two decades. "At about 9am., Catalan police officers were alerted to the death of two people in an establishment," the Catalan police said in a statement.
"Half an hour later they received information that a man responding to the same physical description entered a banking establishment and killed two employees," they said. Soon after, "the man suspected of being responsible for the four deaths was arrested by local police."
Police identified him only as "Pedro P.P", aged 57 and of Spanish nationality.
His motives were being investigated, a police spokesman said, although several reports pointed to a grudge related to finances and a recent dismissal from work.
The suspect, who liked hunting, often walked around the town of 35,000 inhabitants in the evening dressed as a sheriff with a fake pistol and badge, according to a witness quoted by Spanish agency Europa Press.
The news agency quoted the unnamed witness, who claimed to have known the man since he was a child, as saying the suspect was "strange" but previously not violent.
The first victims, a 62-year-old man and his 35-year-old son, were eating breakfast in a bar called La Cuina de l'Anna when the killer walked in and shot each of them once with a shotgun, several reports said.
