A man armed with three handguns fatally shot his ex-wife and five other people during a rampage in a small rural town in the US state of Mississippi, police said.
The victims were killed in several locations, including a shop and two houses, in Arkabutla, a community of fewer than 300 people.
Police charged the 52-year-old local man with first-degree murder and booked him into the county jail.
The motives of his attack have not yet been established.
The suspect is believed to have acted alone, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said.
Sheriff Brad Lance said the attack began when a gunman entered the gas station around 11:00 a.m. local time (5:00 p.m. GMT) and shot and killed a man he was not clearly related to.
He then went to a nearby house, where he fatally shot his ex-wife and, as reported by CNN hit but did not shoot her fiancé.
Investigators say the gunman then drove to a house next door to his own residence and fatally shot a man who may have been his stepfather and an unnamed woman, the New Yorker reported. Times .
He then shot two people, one in a car and one on the road, not far from his own home. According to Sheriff Lance, the last two victims appeared to be construction workers working at the site.
Deputies spotted the suspect in a vehicle matching the description given by witnesses and were able to apprehend him near his home after a short car chase.
“We don’t have a lot of violent crime here. It’s shocking,” said Sheriff Lance. “I never dreamed we’d be dealing with something like this here.”
According to him, the suspect had a rifle and two pistols with him.
Elementary and middle schools in nearby Coldwater were closed during the incident, which occurred 45 miles (72 km) south of Memphis in neighboring Tennessee.
Ethan Cash, a 19-year-old local resident, told WREG-TV he saw the suspect carrying a gun.
Mr. Cash said he also checked the pulse of the victim, who died in his car, and pointed his own gun at a wounded man nearby, who turned out to be the victim’s brother.
Friday’s incident was the 73rd mass shooting since the beginning of the year, according to the non-profit research database Gun Violence Archive (GVA).
GVA defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are injured or killed.
