3 die, gunman killed in Colorado shootings

A gunman and three victims were killed and five others were wounded Sunday in two apparently unprovoked shootings that unfolded about 12 hours and 70 miles apart at a missionary training center and a church in Colorado, law enforcement authorities reported.

One police official said there was reason to believe the shootings were related, but he did not elaborate. In any case, two attacks at Christian institutions in such proximity on a single day seemed extraordinary, and they produced shock and dismay among church members, residents and public officials.

"When innocent people are killed in a religious facility or place of worship, we must voice a collective sense of outrage," Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter said in a statement.

The shootings - at a missionary training center near Denver and at an evangelical megachurch in Colorado Springs - turned a quiet Sunday of fellowship into a day of high drama and gunfire, with bystanders running for cover, swarms of police officers rushing to the scenes, followed by lockdowns, evacuations and a manhunt for the gunman who got away after the first attack.

That shooting occurred about 12:30 a.m. in Arvada, 15 miles west of Denver, at a dormitory of Youth With a Mission, an interdenominational Christian organization with hundreds of centers around the country that train young people for short-term missionary service around the world.

Witnesses said the gunman - in his 20s and wearing a dark jacket and a dark skullcap - spoke to several staff members, insisting he was not homeless and asking to spend the night. After a 30-minute discussion grew heated, he was turned away. When a staff member asked for help from others to usher him out, he drew a handgun, shot a woman and a man to death and wounded two other staff members.

He fled on foot into the snowy night, witnesses said. As ambulances rushed the wounded away, heavily armed police teams with dogs searched the snow-covered ground of surrounding neighborhoods. But no trace of the suspect was found in the area.

Slightly more than 12 hours later in Colorado Springs, about an hour and a half south of Arvada by car, a gunman also clad in dark clothing invaded the grounds of the New Life Church, a 14,000-member institution founded by the Rev. Ted Haggard, who resigned in disgrace last year after acknowledging a three-year sexual relationship with a male prostitute.

Wearing combat boots and carrying an assault rifle and at least one pistol, the gunman, apparently without provocation, opened fire in a parking lot and shot four people, one of them fatally, as bystanders dashed for cover. There were about 7,000 worshipers inside the church when the shooting erupted, a church official said.

The Colorado Springs chief of police, Richard Myers, said that after the parking-lot shootings, the assailant ran into the 10,000-seat church, and was confronted by an armed church security guard, who shot and killed him. Neither the gunman nor the victims in Colorado Springs were immediately identified by the authorities.

At a news conference on Sunday night, Myers praised the security guard, whom he did not name, and said his actions had undoubtedly saved lives. Myers said several "suspicious devices" were found near the gunman's body. The church and other buildings on the campus-like grounds were evacuated and searched. It was unclear later if additional suspicious devices were found.

The pastor of the New Life Church, the Rev. Brady Boyd, said he had watched the horror unfold from his second-floor office. "My heart is broken today for the people who lost their lives," he said.

Asked about the possibility that the shootings had been related, Myers said there was no evidence of such a connection. But the Arvada police chief, Don Wick, said he had reason to believe that the two shootings were linked, though he declined to say why.

Peter Warren, director of the training center in Arvada, said a Christmas banquet had been held at the mission building Saturday night and that the doors had been locked about midnight. A half an hour after the closing, the man appeared and asked for an accommodation.

Among those who spoke to him, Warren said, was Tiffany Johnson, 26, of Minnesota, the director of hospitality for the training site. Johnson was killed, as was Philip Crouse, 24, of Alaska. Two men were wounded - Charlie Blanch, 22, and Dan Griebenow, 24. One was in critical condition and the other in stable condition after being hospitalized.