Another mass shooting in America has left at least seven people dead. Two dozen more people were wounded in the rampage outside Odessa, Texas — the second mass shooting in the state in a month. The alleged gunman was killed by police, bringing the total death toll from the incident to eight.
The terrifying chain of events began with a traffic stop Saturday on an interstate in the heart of Texas’ oil country. State troopers say the man, identified only as a white male in his 30s, pulled over for the traffic stop but then opened fire and took off.
Gunshots hit one trooper in the car that made the traffic stop. The gunman then ditched his car and hijacked a postal service truck, unleashing more rounds as he drove away.
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The gunman was eventually killed in a shootout with police outside a movie theater, but two more officers were among those left wounded. All three officers shot were said on Saturday night to be in stable condition.
An FBI spokesperson told CBS News early Sunday morning that six people were killed, not including the suspect, and 24 were wounded in total. An Odessa city official later confirmed another victim had died overnight in a hospital. Five of the victims were killed in Odessa and two in neighboring Midland. The suspect died in a hospital in Midland.
At least 10 victims remained in critical condition at two local hospitals.
Odessa police said in a statement that the suspect fired “at innocent civilians all over” the city. The youngest victim confirmed as of Sunday morning was a 17-month-old boy.
Officials said during a news conference on Sunday afternoon that they did not believe there was any connection to foreign or domestic terrorism in the shooting.
A law enforcement source told CBS News the deceased shooting suspect was pulled over by police because he apparently had been driving erratically. A number of calls came into the Texas Department of public safety from people reporting his erratic driving, leading to the dispatch of officers.
“This was a joint effort by a multitude of departments to find this animal and to bring him to justice,” Odessa Police Chief Michael Gerke said.
As CBS News correspondent David Begnaud reports, the shooting came just a month after a gunman in El Paso killed 22 people when he opened fire in a Walmart store. According to the Associated Press, Saturday’s attack was the 25th mass shooting in the U.S. this year. That’s as many as in all of 2018.
On Sunday, 10 new laws easing restrictions on guns take effect in Texas.
Speaking to reporters on the White House lawn Sunday, President Trump praised the first responders who intervened to stop the gunman on Saturday, saying it “could have been worse.”
He referred to the shooter as “another very sick person” and called the mass shooting a “mental problem.”
Mr. Trump said the White House was continuing to work with lawmakers at new legislation on guns — work he said was going on irrespective of the latest atrocity. He repeated that mental health was in his view a “big problem” driving the country’s spate of mass shootings.
