A Pennsylvania man killed three people at a municipal meeting – including at least one town official – before being tackled and shot with his own gun.
The man first fired through a wall into the room and then barged in, fatally shooting three people and wounding others, before he was tackled by a local official who turned the gun against the attacker.
The gunman, identified as 59-year-old Rockne Newell, had been feuding with township officials in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains over living conditions at his ramshackle, trash-filled property. He left long enough to get another weapon from his car and continued firing upon returning until he was tackled by at least one person and shot with his own gun, police and witnesses said.
"I heard more than 10 shots," Pocono Record reporter Chris Reber said in a first-person account. "It was automatic, like a string of firecrackers."
The shooting, which injured at least two other people, happened during Ross Township's monthly meeting, Monroe County emergency management director Guy Miller said. State police said 15 to 18 people were at the building, a short drive from Newell's property, when the gunfire erupted.
Two people died at the scene, and a third person died after being flown to a hospital. Police confirmed that at least one of the dead was a township official but gave no details. A fourth person was undergoing surgery late Monday for undisclosed injuries.
State police said Newell had a long-running dispute with township officials over the dilapidated property. He said he lived on social security and could not afford to clean it.
Reber said he was at the township building Monday night when a man armed with a long gun with a scope shot through a wall into the meeting. "The thing that got my attention: plaster flying out, blowing out through the walls. Witnesses would later tell me they saw pictures exploding away from the walls," Reber said in his account told to his editors, Marta Gouger and Chris Mele.
He said he crawled out to a hallway, exited the building and took cover behind a vehicle. "It wasn't real to me until I went back inside and saw people bleeding."
Reber said that a local official at the meeting, Bernie Kozen, executive director of the West End open space commission, grabbed the shooter and subdued him. "Bernie Kozen bear-hugged the gunman and took him down," Reber said. "He shot the shooter with his own gun."
State police said they believed two people may have subdued the gunman, who was shot in one of his legs. They did not say who the second person was.
Representative Matt Cartwright, the local congressman, said he was "stunned and appalled at the atrocities that claimed the lives of innocent citizens in Ross Township". He said he had heard about what Kozen did to prevent more bloodshed. "Mr Kozen is a true hero tonight," Cartwright said in an email.
Newell's property includes an old camper in the front yard filled with wooden pallets, pieces of what appear to be old railroad ties and trash. A garage leans and appears close to collapse, and a propane tank sits inside an old dog house.
Township supervisors voted in February 2012 to take legal action against Newell for violating zoning and sewer regulations, according to meeting minutes posted online.
Last October, Newell set up a fundraising page online and was trying to raise $10,000 to pay for legal fees in his fight with the township.
"Ross township took me to court & the court ruled I have to vacate my home of 20 years," he wrote on the page called saveRockyshome. "I live on SSI which comes to $600 a month I have no money to clean it up."
State police, who guarded the property early Tuesday, were awaiting a search warrant so they could enter it.
In June, the Pocono Record wrote a story about what it said was an 18-year fight between the township and Newell over his property.
Monroe county court sided with the township in August 2012 and ordered Newell to vacate and never again occupy or use the property unless he had the permits to do so. The report said Newell had been living out of a car, a 1984 Pontiac Fiero, and in abandoned buildings since being ordered to vacate.
Newell told the paper he was unemployed for years after an injury from a crash and had nowhere else to go.
"They have no right to kick me off my property," he told the newspaper. "They call my property an eyesore. When I bought it, it was one of only three properties on the entire road that didn't have what they call junk."
Newell was in police custody after being treated at the hospital Monday night.
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