The Associated Press reports that William Spengler, the shooter who opened fire on firefighters in Webster, New York, used the same weapon as the shooter in Newtown, Conn.
Police recovered a .223-caliber semiautomatic Bushmaster rifle, which Spengler used to kill two firefighters and wound two others. “He was equipped to go to war and kill a lot of innocent people,” said Webster Police Chief Gerald Pickering.
Spengler also wrote a several page note before setting fire to his home: "I still have to get ready to see how much of the neighborhood I can burn down, and do what I like doing best, killing people."
“It appears it was a trap,” Pickering said in a press conference on Monday. “People get up in the middle of the night to fight fires. They don’t expect to get shot and killed.”
From the New York Daily News:
In 1981 Spengler admitted to killing his grandmother with a hammer. He served a 17-year prison sentence and had an uneventful parole to 2006.
As a convicted felon, Spengler was not allowed to own guns. Police were examining the possibility Spengler had stolen the weapons, and whether he had a vendetta against the local fire department.
Shares