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NEW YORK: A gunman walked into a fitness centre in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, turned out the lights and started shooting, leaving four people dead and at least 10 wounded, officials and local media said.
The unidentified man carrying two guns inside a gym bag strode into the LA Fitness Gym in Bridgeville, a town near Pittsburgh, where he was a member and headed into a workout room where women were participating in a Latin dance class, according to police.
Officials said three women were killed, while the fourth fatality was most likely the gunman whom they believe took his own life in the same room before police could apprehend him.
"There's a good belief that the shooter is deceased," Allegheny County police superintendent Charles Moffatt told reporters.
"We're still in the infancy stages of the investigation. We have four confirmed deceased," Moffatt said. "We have at least 10 wounded in various hospitals throughout the area."
Moffatt said he had never seen anything quite like it: "It was very chaotic."
CNN had reported earlier that five people had been killed. Police said emergency dispatchers received calls at 8:16 pm that a gunman had shot and wounded women in a class at the gym.
Dozens of emergency vehicles were seen in TV images converging on the shopping centre where the gym is located.
Moffatt said authorities were struggling to identify the victims, most of whom were not carrying identification at the time of the shooting as they were in a fitness club.
Detectives found a note inside the shooter's gym bag, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but its contents were not disclosed.
Moffatt said the gunman was silent during the attack. "He walked right to the room where the shootings occurred as if he knew exactly where he was going, pulled the guns out and started shooting," he said.
One hospital representative told local television station WTAE that five women were being treated for multiple gunshots and were in critical condition.
A witness identified as Nicole told WTAE that the killer walked into an all-female dance class carrying a bag, turned off the lights, and began shooting from at least one firearm, which police said was a handgun.
"He got off a lot of shots," Nicole said. "People everywhere were screaming. It was horrible."
She said that about 30 women were in the dance room during the evening class, while Moffatt said about 70 people may have been present in the gym in total.
"I turned around there was one girl shot in the thigh and one girl shot in the back," said Branson Holly, who was taking another class at the gym at the time.
"I'm still shaken because I was in spinning class and it could have been my class," Holly said.
"I could see flashes in the dark and that's when I realised that someone was actually shooting," another visitor to the gym told a television reporter.
Gun violence regularly plagues the United States, with incidents just this year including deadly rampages at an immigration centre in New York state, the Holocaust museum in Washington, and a theatre in Georgia, as well as a spree in Tennessee and Alabama.
- AFP/so
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