8 killed in US gun rampage

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Police on Wednesday arrested a man suspected of shooting to death eight people in the southern state of Virginia.
The suspect, Christopher Speight, 39, surrendered without incident to police after being cornered in woods west of the historic town of Appomattox, a police statement said.
At 7:10 EST (1210 GMT) this morning, Christopher B. Speight walked in the security perimeter and turned himself in without incident. Charges are pending. He was taken into custody and is being debriefed, a police statement said. Police had launched a massive manhunt in central Virginia after discovering seven bodies at a rural home and another victim nearby.
More than 100 sheriff department deputies, police officers and state troopers worked through the night to find Speight, cordoning off a section of the woods where he was hiding. The shooting suspect on Tuesday fired at a helicopter called in to aid with the search. At least four shots hit the craft forcing it to make an emergency landing, officials said.
The incident began unfolding around noon on Tuesday when a deputy from the Appomattox sheriffs office responded to an emergency call about an injured man lying on a country road.
When the deputy arrived on scene, the deputy heard several gun shots, Molnar said.
Officers who stayed at the scene found four bodies outside a nearby home and three bodies inside the residence.
The victims were male and female, according to police, who did not give a motive for the attack, although local media reported the wife and the son of the suspect were among the dead.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported Wednesday that a male teenager was among the fatalities and said the shootings appeared to have been triggered by a family argument.
The daily wrote that Samuel Carter, an official on the Appomattox County Board of Supervisors, said he understood that a man had shot and killed his wife and his son during a dispute.
Carter said he was not aware of any history of trouble in the family.
The Post reported that before daybreak on Wednesday police authorities closed Appomattox Countys four public schools and a local Christian academy
One nearby resident told the daily that law enforcement officers told us to stay locked inside and that some houses were evacuated.
The office of newly-inaugurated Virginia governor Robert McDonnell described the shootings as a horrific tragedy, according to a statement carried by the Washington Post.