UNIVERSITY STUDENT Leslie Schrager and her five housemates were still in bed at about 10.30am yesterday when police in Binghamton, about 140 miles northwest of New York City, came pounding on their door.
“One of our housemates thought they heard banging of some kind, but when you’re living in downtown Binghamton, it’s always noisy,” Ms Schrager told the Associated Press. “Literally two minutes later, the cops came and got us out.”
The noise had come from next door, where the American Civic Association helps immigrants and refugees, offering personal counselling, resettlement, citizenship and reunification and providing interpreters and translators.
A few minutes earlier a man, who according to a police officer carried identification with the name of Jiverly Voong (42) of nearby Johnson City, New York, barricaded the back door of the building with his car before walking into the centre carrying a high-powered rifle. He was wearing a bright-green nylon jacket and dark-rimmed glasses. He started shooting immediately, killing at least 13 people and wounding at least five others.
The suspect had recently been let go from IBM in nearby Johnson City, said Rep Maurice Hinchey, whose district includes Binghamton.
A citizenship class was scheduled for yesterday and dozens of people were at the centre when the shooting started. As police Swat teams arrived at the scene, the gunman remained inside the building, apparently holding those inside hostage.
At one stage, a local professor who is fluent in Vietnamese came to help FBI hostage negotiators who attempted to keep the gunman calm.
During the siege, two people were led from the building in handcuffs, fuelling speculation that the gunman may not have acted alone.
As the hostages began to emerge from the building in the early afternoon, however, most reports suggested that the gunman, who lay dead inside, acted alone.
“While the situation is still developing and details are being gathered, we do know that a gunman entered the American Civic Association in Binghamton this morning and that there are fatalities,” New York governor David Paterson said yesterday afternoon.
“We are monitoring the situation and I have directed the state police to assist the Binghamton police department in any way they can.”
Yesterday’s rampage was the third mass shooting in the US in less than a month and came days before the second anniversary of the country’s worst ever such incident at Virginia Tech.
Last Sunday a heavily armed man burst into a North Carolina nursing home killing eight people before being shot and wounded by a policeman.
Last month, a 28-year-old unemployed man killed 10 people, including his mother, other relatives and a small child, in a shooting rampage through two counties in Alabama, the worst in that state’s history.
Last December, a man dressed as Santa Claus opened fire at a Christmas party being given by his former wife in Covina, California, killing nine people before shooting himself.
Some criminologists suggest the recent spate of shootings could be linked to the recession and the impact of job losses on personal finances and relationships.