Six victims, gunman dead at birthday party in Colo. Springs

DENVER — A shooting at a birthday party in Colorado Springs, Colo., early Sunday left six people and the gunman dead, police said.

Police officers responded shortly after midnight to a shooting at the Canterbury Mobile Home Park, where they found six adults dead and one man with “serious injuries,” the Colorado Springs police said. He was taken to a hospital, where he died.

The police said a birthday party was being held for one of the victims in a home in the park and that “friends, family and children were gathered inside” when the shooting occurred.

The gunman, who was not publicly identified, was “a boyfriend of one of the female victims,” police said. He drove to the home, walked inside “and began shooting people at the party before taking his own life,” police said.

The children who were in the home at the time were not injured and are staying with relatives, police said.

“Words fall short to describe the tragedy that took place this morning,” Vince Niski, chief of the Colorado Springs Police Department, said in a statement. “As the chief of police, as a husband, as a father, as a grandfather, as a member of this community, my heart breaks for the families who have lost someone they love and for the children who have lost their parents.”

Police on Sunday were trying to determine a motive for the shooting. The names of the victims and the gunman will be released by the El Paso County coroner, authorities said.

Niski said officers and investigators were “left incredibly shaken.”

In March, 10 people were killed in a shooting at a supermarket in Boulder, Colo.

Three people were killed in a shooting at a Planned Parenthood center in Colorado Springs in 2015, nearly a month after three people were killed by a man carrying a semi-automatic rifle on a residential street near the city’s downtown.

A shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., in 2012 left 12 people dead, and in 1999, two students at Columbine High School killed 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves.