<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>Gunman kills 13, shoots himself
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New York state troopers speaking to a reporter outside the house of Jiverly Wong's family in Johnson City, New York, yesterday. -- PHOTO: AFP
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->Binghamton (New York) - Police yesterday were piecing together why an unemployed United States immigrant snapped and went on a murderous rampage, killing 13 people and himself.
Jiverly Wong, the gunman at the heart of the tragedy in the quiet, small town of Binghamton, was reportedly of Vietnamese origin and in his early 40s.
On Friday, Wong blocked the back doors of the American Civic Association (ACC) with his car, thwarting escape, before bursting into the front of the centre where he was learning English, in a hail of gunfire. He then committed suicide.
It was the nation's worst mass shooting since April 2007, when Cho Seung Hui, 23, shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech University, then killed himself.
During the rampage, dozens of people spent four hours cowering in the centre's basement, waiting to be told by police that it was safe to leave.
'I heard the shots...I heard no screams, just silence,' said Ms Zhanar Tokhtabayeva, a 30-year- old from Kazakhstan, who was in an English class when her teacher screamed for everyone to go to the storage room.
Police arrived within minutes of an emergency call made by a receptionist shot in the abdomen. She had pretended she was dead until she could make her escape.
Local police chief Joseph Zikuski said she stayed on the phone for 90 minutes, 'feeding us information constantly', despite a serious wound in the abdomen.
'She's a hero in her own right,' he said.
Two handguns were recovered at the scene. Police have searched Wong's home.
Mr Zikuski told NBC television's Today show that Wong was angry about his language issues and his lack of employment.
The CNN news channel reported that several years ago, Wong had been employed at a high-tech firm, Endicott Interconnect, which produces computer chips for medical equipment and where Wong had trained his co-workers.
But he was most recently working in a shop which used industrial vacuum cleaners to clean industrial equipment, the television network said.
US President Barack Obama, on a visit to France, said he was 'shocked and deeply saddened to learn about the act of senseless violence'. AFP, NYT, AP
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New York state troopers speaking to a reporter outside the house of Jiverly Wong's family in Johnson City, New York, yesterday. -- PHOTO: AFP
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->Binghamton (New York) - Police yesterday were piecing together why an unemployed United States immigrant snapped and went on a murderous rampage, killing 13 people and himself.
Jiverly Wong, the gunman at the heart of the tragedy in the quiet, small town of Binghamton, was reportedly of Vietnamese origin and in his early 40s.
On Friday, Wong blocked the back doors of the American Civic Association (ACC) with his car, thwarting escape, before bursting into the front of the centre where he was learning English, in a hail of gunfire. He then committed suicide.
It was the nation's worst mass shooting since April 2007, when Cho Seung Hui, 23, shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech University, then killed himself.
During the rampage, dozens of people spent four hours cowering in the centre's basement, waiting to be told by police that it was safe to leave.
'I heard the shots...I heard no screams, just silence,' said Ms Zhanar Tokhtabayeva, a 30-year- old from Kazakhstan, who was in an English class when her teacher screamed for everyone to go to the storage room.
Police arrived within minutes of an emergency call made by a receptionist shot in the abdomen. She had pretended she was dead until she could make her escape.
Local police chief Joseph Zikuski said she stayed on the phone for 90 minutes, 'feeding us information constantly', despite a serious wound in the abdomen.
'She's a hero in her own right,' he said.
Two handguns were recovered at the scene. Police have searched Wong's home.
Mr Zikuski told NBC television's Today show that Wong was angry about his language issues and his lack of employment.
The CNN news channel reported that several years ago, Wong had been employed at a high-tech firm, Endicott Interconnect, which produces computer chips for medical equipment and where Wong had trained his co-workers.
But he was most recently working in a shop which used industrial vacuum cleaners to clean industrial equipment, the television network said.
US President Barack Obama, on a visit to France, said he was 'shocked and deeply saddened to learn about the act of senseless violence'. AFP, NYT, AP
