At least 10 people were killed, including a police officer, when a gunman opened fire at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, on Monday – the second deadly mass shooting incident in the United States in a week. Police have arrested the alleged shooter.
Police said the incident unfolded at about 3 pm at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, a north-central Colorado city, about 45 kilometres northwest of Denver.
Frantic shoppers and employees fled for cover through the supermarket as law enforcement officers rushed to the scene.
Boulder Police Chief Maris Herold, her voice choking with emotion, said 10 people were killed. Among them was 51-year-old policeman Eric Talley, who she said was the first officer to respond to the shooting.
Police said the gunman, who was not publicly identified, was injured, but gave no further details.
News Televisions footages showed a shirtless, bearded man in boxer shorts being led away in handcuffs, before he was placed on a stretcher and loaded into an ambulance. Blood was visible from one of his legs and he was limping.
Police said the suspected gunman was believed to be the only individual involved in the crime.
Video footage taken by an onlooker and posted to social media shows two bodies lying in the parking lot, before the person with the camera walks inside and films a third body lying there, as three shots are heard in the background.
The incident came less than a week after shooting last Tuesday that left eight people dead, including six Asian women, at three day spas in and around Atlanta. A 21-year-old man has been charged with those killings.
Colorado has seen some of the most shocking mass shootings in modern US history.
In 2012, a man burst into a movie theatre in the Denver suburb of Aurora during a midnight screening and opened fire, killing 12 and wounding 70. In 1999, two students at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colorado, shot dead 12 classmates and a teacher before committing suicide.
