Two Dead From Cinema Shooting In The US

A gunman has opened fire at a cinema in the US state of Louisiana, killing two people and injuring several others before shooting himself, officials say.

Police said the attacker was a 58-year-old white male armed with a handgun but did not release any further details.

Witnesses said the man opened fire about 20 minutes into a screening of a film at the Grand Theatre in Lafayette.

Hours earlier, US President Barack Obama told the BBC that gun law reform had been his “greatest frustration”.

Police chief Jim Craft said officers responded to reports of a shooting at about 19:30 local time (01:30 GMT).

Mr Craft said seven other people were taken to a local hospital with injuries ranging from critical to non-life threatening.

The gunman’s identity is known to police, Mr Craft added, but is not being released at this time.

The police chief said that the gunman did have a criminal history but that it was “pretty old”.

Dozens of emergency vehicles were dispatched to the scene of the shooting in Lafayette, a city of about 120,000 people.

One witness said she heard a loud bang like a firecracker and saw a man staring up and shooting during a screening of the film Trainwreck.

“He wasn’t saying anything. I didn’t hear anybody screaming either,” Katie Domingue told local newspaper The Advertiser.
About 100 people are thought to have been in the building at the time of the shooting.