Five dead in Washington state shooting and standoff

Spurling also clarified how authorities were notified of the shooting. Authorities did not detail the previous interaction between the shooter and the officer he called.

Pigott said residents know each other in the area that has homes with large lots with room for horses.

When law enforcement officers turned up at the home at about 8:30 a.m. (1630 GMT) they could see the man through a window and could see that he was armed, Osterhout said. Authorities say the man killed himself near a town across Puget Sound from Seattle. It is not immediately known if she was the one who escaped the shooting. The husband had a heating and air conditioning contractor business, and had recently been hospitalised.

Four people were killed by a gunman on Friday in a rural Washington home, before he shot himself dead following an hours-long standoff with the police. A girl who survived has been taken to the hospital.

A Mason County SWAT team is responding to a 911 call about four people shot in the Belfair area.

“The individual shot four people, including children, and then after a standoff shot himself”, Mr Spurling told AFP. When he returned home, he was on a lot of medications, Pigott said of the man. The girl was “not seriously injured”, and investigators are looking to her in order to gather some understanding of what took place and why. No deaths have been confirmed by the Mason County sheriff’s office.

Officers had been negotiating with the man since Friday morning.

Osterhout said he believed the four victims were all found in one area on the property, away from the gunman.