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4 Killed in New York Shooting Spree; Suspect Holed Up After Shootout With Cops

Mar. 13, 2013 9:00pm Jason Howerton

MOHAWK, NY – MARCH 13: Officials remove the body of a shooting victim from John’s Barber Shop as investigators talk outside the doorway on March 13, 2013 in Mohawk, New York. Police have identified 64-year-old Kurt Meyers as a possible suspect responsible for a total of four shooting deaths and two injuries across the area earlier in the day. Credit: Getty Images

HERKIMER, N.Y. (AP) — A man neighbors said rarely spoke to them started a fire in his apartment on Wednesday, shot four people dead at a couple of businesses in his hometown and a neighboring village and then exchanged gunfire with police officers who surrounded an abandoned building where he apparently was holed up, authorities said.

Police officers were fired on from the upstate New York building on Wednesday afternoon while looking for 64-year-old Kurt Myers, state police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico said. At least one officer returned fire, and later it was unknown if Myers was still alive, D’Amico said.

“We’re in no rush to bring this to a conclusion,” D’Amico said, adding that the main objective was to make sure no one else was hurt.

Police said Myers’ rampage started with a fire in his apartment in the nearby village of Mohawk at about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday. D’Amico said Myers then drove to John’s Barber Shop around the corner and used a shotgun to kill two customers, whom he identified as Harry Montgomery, 68, and Michael Ransear, 57, a retired corrections officer. The shop’s owner, John Seymour, and another customer, Dan Haslauer, were listed in critical condition at a Utica hospital.

D’Amico said the gunman then drove to Gaffy’s Fast Lube in nearby Herkimer and used the shotgun to kill Thomas Stefka, an employee, and Michael Renshaw, a customer who was a 23-year veteran of the state Department of Corrections.

John Seymour told his sister, Mary Hornett, the barbershop attack came out of nowhere.

“He just said that the guys were in the barbershop and this guy comes in and he says, ‘Hi John, do you remember me?’ and my brother said, ‘Yes, Kurt, how are you?’ and then he just started shooting,” Hornett said.

Hornett said her brother, who was hospitalized in critical condition, was doing well after being shot in the left hand and right hip.

“My brother couldn’t think of any reason why he would do such a thing,” she said of Myers, a former customer who hadn’t been in the shop for a couple of years.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in a press conference in Herkimer, called it “truly an inexplicable situation.”

“There’s no apparent motive to the best of our knowledge at this time to provoke these attacks,” he said.

HERKIMER, NY – MARCH 13: Police officers walk down North Main Street away from the scene of a standoff with shooting suspect Kurt Meyers on March 13, 2013 in Herkimer, New York. Police have identified 64-year-old Kurt Meyers as a possible suspect responsible for a total of four shooting deaths and two injuries across the area earlier in the day. Credit: Getty Images

HERKIMER, NY – MARCH 13: Tactical police officers return to their vehicles on North Main Street, equipment in hand, after waiting at the scene of a standoff with a murder suspect on March 13, 2013 in Herkimer, New York. Police have identified 64-year-old Kurt Meyers as a possible suspect responsible for a total of four shooting deaths and two injuries across the area earlier in the day. Credit: Getty Images

HERKIMER, NY – MARCH 13: Two members of the New York State Police walk across a vacant parking lot during a standoff with murder suspect Kurt Meyers on March 13, 2013 in Herkimer, New York. Police have identified 64-year-old Kurt Meyers as a possible suspect responsible for a total of four shooting deaths and two injuries across the area earlier in the day. Credit: Getty Images

D’Amico said police had not had any communication with Myers, whose only known police record was a 1973 drunken-driving arrest.

Police positioned in front of a block of small businesses topped with apartments in the village of Herkimer were still looking for Myers on Wednesday evening.

A local businessman, jeweler Fred Weisser, said police were trying to get people out while Myers was believed to be in a building next door.

“They’re sending in a robot to check the place out,” he said by telephone. “I guess we’re stuck. We’re between him and the cops. I don’t want to step out and get clipped by a sniper.”

Myles Smith, who lives in one of the apartments above the shops, said by cellphone he had heard police trying to talk to Myers.

“The snipers on the roof are sitting there,” Smith said. “I ain’t seen a whole lot of movement. I heard about five gunshots. I keep hearing them trying to talk him out, but I don’t think he’s coming out.”

The rear of the small building where Myers lived was burned out, and police continued to guard the building, where they found guns and ammunition. It was unclear if they were in his apartment.

Neighbors said they barely knew Myers, who rarely spoke, left every morning in his red Jeep and came back.

Traci Randall said the only time she remembers speaking to her next-door neighbor was when he yelled at her son because he thought he had shot an air pellet at his Jeep.

“He would walk by himself. He was kind of a loner. No wife,” she said.

Neighbors said he never had visitors or friends. Gary Urich said Myers wouldn’t even say much as `Hi’ to him when walking by his porch.

“I said, `How are you doing?’ No response. He just walked by,” he said.

Michele Mlinar, a bartender at Cangee’s Bar and Grille in Herkimer, said Myers frequently went in and had a bottle or two of Coors Light and left without speaking to anyone. She said he was always alone and she didn’t even know his name until police released his mug shot on Wednesday.

Cangee’s owner Candy Rellin called Myers “just an odd little man.”

The two villages are about 65 miles east of Syracuse, on opposite sides of the Mohawk River in a region known as the Mohawk Valley.

James Baron, the mayor of Mohawk described his village as close-knit and friendly, “the kind of place where you’d say, `Oh, it would never happen here.’”

Elizabeth Cirelli was shocked by Stefka’s slaying. He was a neighbor in Herkimer.

“He was a great guy, a really nice person. This is horrific. We really couldn’t believe it,” she said.

Herkimer County Community College lifted a lockdown during the afternoon, and all but a few schools near the scene also were releasing students. D’Amico said most of the three-block neighborhood around the search scene was evacuated.

Herkimer is a village of 7,700 named for the German immigrant family that settled in the western Mohawk Valley in the 1720s. The economically distressed villages are 2 miles away from Ilion, where a 2-century-old Remington Arms gun plant is a major employer.

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Comments (35)

battles
Posted on March 14, 2013 at 2:41pm
“We’re in no rush to bring this to a conclusion,…” The main object in liberal New York is probably to get as many people killed as practicable as a catalyst to demand more gun grabbing control.

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Slipstick
Posted on March 14, 2013 at 10:35am
Mom4times said: and i was planning on going shopping earlier in the day….around 9 ish…..then changed my mind and was going to wait till after the mail came…..sometime before noon.

That decision may have saved her life. In today’s world, any time I leave the house, I carry a ‘friend.’
No telling when someone ‘with issues’ will ‘wig out,’ nowadays.

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The_Woofster
Posted on March 14, 2013 at 10:15am
I blame the media and the government for acts like this. Let’s keep it in the limelight everyday, constant reports on guns, gun owners, control, lack of control, new laws, old laws, more laws.

So then, when someone with “issues” decides to wig out, and what’s been constantly bombarded to us everyday via the news, what’s the first thing to come to mind?

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Bohump
Posted on March 14, 2013 at 9:14am
The Bad Guy’s Don’t Care about Gun Control, … And pray that You can not Defend YourSelf !
( gun control to me, … Is being to hit the Target Every Time.)

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mom4times
Posted on March 14, 2013 at 8:51am
they killed him….shortly after 8am…..he killed one of the dogs first

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wilbstal
Posted on March 14, 2013 at 8:51am
probably a NSA worker trying to Get gun confiscation advanced through some terror. Obama hired this guy

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wilbstal
Posted on March 14, 2013 at 8:40am
Maybe the shooter was brain poisioned from a 64 oz Soda, and caused his unbalnce situation. This should be examined and baned immediatley. Cuomo and Bloombergs fault!!! vote the bastards out

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ColoradoMaverick
Posted on March 14, 2013 at 6:27am
How is this possible with such strict gun control laws? Could it be that only the criminals have guns in New York??

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- Revere2
  Posted on March 14, 2013 at 7:33am
  Great point!!
  
  Report this comment
- 700P
  Posted on March 14, 2013 at 9:16am
  Bet it was the 8-shot Colorado Special shotgun. Cue Bloomberg “We have to ban shotguns and 2 liter sodas so no one builds silenced shotguns like the scary guy in ‘No Country for Old Men’ and also limit sales of those cattle air guns!”
  
  My sympathies to you and every freedom loving resident of the beautiful state of Colorado. I expect fully you’ll take it back during the next election as the Progressive Nanny-statists (you can’t spell statist without Stasi) will be too stoned to remember to vote.
  
  Report this comment
galicant wiseword
Posted on March 14, 2013 at 2:27am
Compare the police reaction to that of the California police taking out Christopher Dorner, the “cop killer”. Funny how they opened fire on the cabin, lit it on fire and let it burn to cinders. Good thing he decided to keep his drivers license with him and that it was made of high grade steel covered in kevlar or they might not have been able to identify the body.

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Wannabee
Posted on March 14, 2013 at 12:22am
Cuomo and Bloomberg should well know that when an economy is bad, unemployment is high, gas prices, food prices and heating costs are high as we have seen for too long, many people are suffering. It affects relationships, it affects both physical and mental health and people are in despair looking for ways to relieve their misery.
If they would concentrate on helping people with their problems and not going after their own pet Nonsense peeves and ideologies. like drink sizes or sugar content or raving about a guaranteed individual right guaranteed by our founders in our Constitution, (gun ownership), they may prevent many of these occurences. This applies across the entire country, the states, the White House and the Congress. Every citizen should also be involved to identify people with problems in their neighborhoods in order to get help to them or to determine if they are having severe difficulties.

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hillbillyinny
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 11:33pm
NYC (Bloomberg) is five hours from Herkimer/Mohawk and Albany (Cuomo) is two and one-half hours away. What does this have to do with either of them?!

The guy is either really sick or really mad at someone or something, or just plain MAD!

This type of thing rarely happens in town like these two small towns. Depressed area, but generally sensible people.

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- G-WHIZ
  Posted on March 14, 2013 at 12:33pm
  Was instigated by the PROGS in power to cry “Oh-Poor Mee!!” and cry for gun-control with their new GENERATED-CRISIS!!
  
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oldironsides
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 11:10pm
Time to outlaw matches – and round up all the loners for reeducation and assimilation into the collective

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Jimbo65
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 10:51pm
Tragic. You never know what is going on in someone’s mind, even more so if they are a loner.

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- mom4times
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 11:00pm
  and i was planning on going shopping earlier in the day….around 9 ish…..then changed my mind and was going to wait till after the mail came…..sometime before noon
  
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Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 10:50pm
Wait, Coomoron and Bloomingidiot pased all kinds of gun control and told people they would be Safe. How could this happen? What went wrong? Did this man use a magazine holding more than 7 bullets? Did he willfully ignore the commands of the Governor and actually break the law?

Well, I guess Cuomoron will just have to pass a law that says “Or Else, this time I REALLLLY mean it”.

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- RIDEMODELS
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 11:09pm
  If Doomberg had wore his cape and had his magic lasso to work today, this would have never happened…….
  
  Only the criminals will have guns………….
  
  Report this comment
- Anonymous T. Irrelevant
  Posted on March 14, 2013 at 12:00am
  Perfect example of why NY needs to have conceal-carry. If they had, this would be over. The man would be stopped, people would still be alive, and police would not have to chase a killer, mopping up after him.
  
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COFemale
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 10:47pm
Hmm Loners. Okay, NY it is time you add loners to your people not to own guns. It’s the loners who are the mental cases, not some woman who reads the Constitution or goes to a hospital for medication and nurses lie about her condition.

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- RIDEMODELS
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 11:13pm
  Look at all of those hundreds of police officers and trucks with guns etc……Showed up a little too late, just like all gun homicides……We cannot rely on the police to protect us from the bad guys, and this is why teachers need guns in the class room, the kids would never know until the time came and then the parents would thank the teachers after the fact…….
  
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- wilbstal
  Posted on March 14, 2013 at 8:46am
  stop singling out groups of folks you sound like Hitler. Arm all citizens and this nonsese will stop
  
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Eastinfection
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 10:44pm
“We’re in no rush to bring this to a conclusion”

Of course not. Don Lemon and Geraldo aren’t there yet.

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- RIDEMODELS
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 11:17pm
  Texas is FULL of Guns and all I hear is the bad guy just got shot by the store owner…..Maybe these gun-less states could take a Que from the rest…..Sorry to see innocent people being slaughtered because one man thinks he knows more than his scared public knows…..and I hear Rape is up in NYC too….sounds like a great retreat.
  
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- wilbstal
  Posted on March 14, 2013 at 8:44am
  imagine if this was mass gun confiscation by Cuomo and 2000 of these were going on all at once all over NY. Hmm they cant get this one under control in 24 hrs. What will Cuomo do if he gets 2000 folks barricaded all in the same day???
  
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RLTW
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 10:44pm
Crazy days ahead; does the Gov of Illinois speak out every time someone is shot and killed by a criminal gang in Chicago?

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- Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 10:58pm
  Rahm only speaks out when he doesn’t get his kick back, other than that, if they don’t break union rules, it’s game on.
  
  Report this comment
- DEFCON4
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 11:02pm
  If he did, it would require an ongoing, 24-7 press conference.
  
  Report this comment
- Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 11:23pm
  If he did speak out, that would mean a press conference, and that would mean putting on pants, he doesn’t like having to put on his pants if he doesn’t have to, so if he feels something aint worth pants, he aint gonna speak out.
  
  Report this comment
justangry
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 10:44pm
Impossible because there are laws against guns in NY.

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- RIDEMODELS
  Posted on March 13, 2013 at 11:19pm
  1911 when 911 is too slow…….
  
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thegreatcarnac
Posted on March 13, 2013 at 10:39pm
I am guessing he is hypnotized to kill himself. He probably was supposed to kill himself right after his shooting spree but didn’t. Suddenly that will ‘kick-in’ and he will shoot himself. Watch!. Most of these shooters are loners with mental problems or if they have a family the family is not watching them constantly. They are prime suspects to be picked and brought in for 3 or 4 hours for a little hypno-brainwork and no one misses them.

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- katzkiner
  Posted on March 14, 2013 at 5:36am
  Carnac, just google Devils Breath, no hypnosis needed. The CIA weaponized the stuff back in the 60′s.
  
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- thegreatcarnac
  Posted on March 14, 2013 at 10:36am
  Thanks Katz…..
  
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