Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) - A gold miner fatally shot four people, including two police officers, before apparently killing himself after a shooting rampage Tuesday in Guyana's coastal capital.
Deryck Kanhai, 51, barricaded himself in his second-story apartment above a taxi company in the afternoon and began randomly firing bullets into two streets in Georgetown, police said.
The shots killed a woman and a man before police officers arrived, authorities said. Kanhai then fatally shot two officers during a more than two-hour standoff.
Kanhai, a licensed gun holder, might have finally ended the standoff by fatally shooting himself, but the cause of his death was still under investigatioin, authorities said. A shotgun and two pistols were recovered by police
Terrified people hid inside businesses and homes as dozens of shots were exchanged between the shooter and police on Middle Street, one of Georgetown's main commercial centers. Tear gas canisters were also used by police.
The motive for the shooting rampage was unclear. Police said only that Kanhai had "apparently gone berserk."
The Guyana Police Force offered condolences to the relatives of the two slain officers and the two dead civilians.
Guyana, a country of nearly 800,000 inhabitants, is on South America's northern shoulder and roughly 90 percent of its people lives along the coast. Gold mined in the remote interior is the leading export.
(Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
