US woman kills 3, self in gun rampage
ABERDEEN: A woman armed with a handgun opened fire on Thursday on co-workers at a Maryland distribution centre for the Rite Aid drugstore chain, killing three people and wounding three others before taking her own life, the Harford County sheriff said.
The shooting unfolded shortly after the suspect, a temporary employee there, reported for work at the warehouse in Perryman, Maryland, about 55km northeast of Baltimore, Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler said.
The sheriff said investigators had not yet determined a motive, but a law enforcement source said the shooting was believed to have been sparked by a workrelated grievance.
The sheriff’s office identified the killer as Snochia Moseley, 26, a resident of Baltimore County. The fact that the assailant was a woman was unusual given that the overwhelming majority of mass shootings in the United States are committed by men.
Gahler said Thursday’s gun violence began outside the warehouse and then moved inside, but investigators were still piecing together the sequence of events.
He said the suspect, who was armed with a 9mm Glock pistol and two or three magazines of ammunition, shot herself in the head, and that no shots were fired by law enforcement.
The Rite Aid centre, part of a larger warehouse in an industrial park, has nearly 1,000 employees, company spokesman Pete Strella said. The facility packages pharmaceuticals and other products for delivery to more than 2,500 stores.
Police spent several hours searching the 19,510sq m building for possible additional victims, the sheriff's office said.
Agents from the Baltimore offices of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Federal Bureau of Investigation also responded, the agencies said.
The shooting occurred a day after a man shot and wounded four people, including a police officer, at a Pennsylvania court building before he was killed by police, according to Pennsylvania State Police.