Gunman kills 4, self at Minnesota sign company

  AMY FORLITIMINNEAPOLIS -- A man burst into a sign-making business in Minneapolis, fatally shooting the owner and three others in the office before turning the gun on himself, family and officials said Friday.

Police have not revealed the name or apparent motive of the shooter who injured at least four others in the Thursday afternoon attack, and say a search of the suspect's home turned up nothing.

Reuven Rahamim, 61, was shot to death in "a senseless act of violence" at Accent Signage Systems Inc. in Bryn Mawr, a mainly residential neighborhood on the northwest side of the city, son-in-law Chad Blumenfield said in a statement.

"Other members of the Accent family tragically lost their lives as well, and we mourn their loss," Blumenfield said. He provided no details.

UPS driver Keith Basinski was among those killed, the mail service said in a statement Friday. UPS Northern Plains District President Jill Schubert did not say why Basinski was at the Accent offices. She said the company was "profoundly shocked and saddened" at his death.

Authorities have not revealed the names of the others killed.

A police summary describes a chaotic scene with multiple 911 calls from the business and one caller saying someone had been shot. When police arrived, they found four people already dead. Dozens of police squad cars and SWAT officers swarmed the area. The first officers on the scene evacuated workers from the business and closed off several blocks.

Of the wounded, John Souter's condition was upgraded from critical to serious as of Friday morning and Eric Rivers remained in critical condition, according to Christine Hill, a spokeswoman for the Hennepin County Medical Center where they were being treated. She had no information on the condition of a third man earlier listed in critical condition.

A fourth person injured has been treated and released, Hill said Friday.

Late Thursday, police searched a house in south Minneapolis where the suspected shooter had lived but found "nothing that we know of," police spokesman Sgt. Stephen McCarty told the Associated Press. He confirmed the address of the suspect's home but declined to confirm a newspaper report that named the gunman.

There was no evidence of life at that house early Friday except a light in the basement and a boarded-up window with pieces of broken glass nearby. No one responded to a knock on the door.

Thomas Pitheon, a neighbor who lives across the alley, said he came home just after dark Thursday and found "about a dozen" SWAT team members around the house. Pitheon said he had only exchanged pleasantries with the homeowner whom he described as "an average guy" in his 40s.

Rahamim started Accent Signage Systems, Inc. in the basement of his Minneapolis home in the early 1980s, according to the business publication Finance & Commerce. Rahamim said he chose that name because he wanted it to be the first sign company listed in the Yellow Pages.

The small interior signage company specializes in American with Disabilities Act-compliant signs after developing a patented method to create Braille signs for the blind. U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce Francisco Sanchez praised the company for its innovation during a visit to the facility in August, the paper reported.

Rahamim was born and raised in Israel and served as a soldier in the Israeli army before coming to the U.S., Blumenfield said.

"He loved his work and dedicated much of his energy to developing new and greener products," he said by email. "He loved cooking and having people over at his home. He loved spending time with his children and grandchildren and especially loved to take his grandson for bike rides."

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton expressed his condolences.

"I deplore this senseless violence," Dayton said. "There is no place for it anywhere in Minnesota."

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Associated Press writers Patrick Condon, Doug Glass and Jeff Baenen in Minneapolis, Gretchen Ehlke in Milwaukee, and Barbara Rodriguez in Chicago contributed to this report.

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Wisconsin police release video of temple gunman

The gunman who killed six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin before being shot to death by police was identified Monday as a 40-year-old Army veteran and former leader of a white supremacist heavy metal band.

  TODD RICHMONDMILWAUKEE -- Police in suburban Milwaukee have released squad car videos that show a gunman who killed six people at a Sikh temple last month shoot the first officer on the scene.

Video from Oak Creek Police Lt. Brian Murphy's squad car camera shows him checking on two victims in the temple parking lot and then exchanging fire with Wade Michael Page as Page emerges from the temple.

The video shows Murphy rolling behind a parked car for cover and Page chasing him down, firing multiple shots at him. Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm says Murphy was hit 15 times.

Page killed himself following a firefight with Officer Sam Lenda. Lenda told reporters on Monday that he was just doing his job.

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Gunman opens fire at rally for new Quebec premier

  PHIL COUVRETTEMONTREAL -- A masked gunman opened fire during a midnight victory rally for Quebec's new premier, killing one person and wounding another. The new premier, Pauline Marois of the separatist Parti Quebecois, was whisked off the stage by guards while giving her speech and uninjured.

It was not clear if the gunman was trying to shoot Marois, whose party favors separation for the French-speaking province from Canada.

Montreal police Cmdr. Ian Lafreniere identified the gunman only as a 50-year-old man and said he opened fire in the back of the hall while Marois was giving her victory speech to hundreds of supporters at the Metropolis auditorium. She had just declared her firm conviction that Quebec needs to be a sovereign country before she was pulled off the stage.

"What's going on?" Marois told her security detail as they grabbed her arms and took her off the stage during the celebration of her party's victory in Tuesday's provincial election.

The gunman then fled outside where he set a small fire before he was captured, police said.

Police said they didn't know the gunman's motive. As the suspect was being dragged toward the police cruiser, he was heard shouting in French, "The English are waking up!"

Marois returned to the stage after the shooting and asked the crowd to peacefully disperse and then seemed to finish her speech. She left the hall amid a tight cordon of provincial police bodyguards.

The attack shocked Canadians who are not used to such violence at political events.

The suspect was a heavy-set man wearing a black ski or balaclava mask and a blue bathrobe over black clothes. Police didn't identify what weapons he had but camera footage showed a pistol and a rifle at the scene. Police said there is no reason to believe there are other suspects.

Police said a 45-year-old man was pronounced dead at the scene and a second man in his 30s was wounded. A third man was treated for shock. Police didn't identify the victims so it was not clear if any of them were party officials. The crowd was apparently unaware of what happened when Marois was whisked off the stage.

Marois said her thoughts were with the family of the victim in a statement issued early Wednesday.

"Following this tragedy all Quebecois are mourning today before such a gratuitous act of violence," she said. "Never will a society such as ours let violence dictate its collective choices."

The separatist party won Tuesday's provincial election, but failed to win a majority of legislative seats. Though the Parti Quebecois wants the province to break away from Canada, its victory is unlikely to signal a new push for independence. Opinion polls show little appetite for a separatist referendum. Previous referendums on separatism had been rejected by voters in 1980 and 1995. Marois herself has left much uncertainty about if and when a referendum would be held. But her party will push for more autonomy from the federal government.

The attack took place just after Marois began speaking in English - a rare occurrence in a speech at a partisan PQ event. She had promised English-speaking Quebecers that their rights would be protected, following an emotionally charged campaign that saw her party focus on language-and-identity issues. Earlier in the evening, people in the crowd booed when they heard outgoing Liberal Premier Jean Charest speak English in his concession speech, ending nearly 10 years in power. Analysts said the PQ victory had more to do with weariness with the Liberals after three terms.

More autonomy for Quebec is high on the agenda for the PQ, which has said it would seek a transfer of powers from the federal government in areas like employment insurance and immigration policy. If those measures are rejected, the party believes it would have a stronger case for independence.

Without a majority in the Quebec Assembly, however, the PQ will need to work with other parties to pass legislation, and the results will undermine efforts to quickly hold a referendum on separation.

The PQ had just under 31 percent of the vote and 54 seats in the provincial legislature, falling short of a majority in the assembly. The Liberals had about 31 percent and 50 seats.

A new party, Coalition Avenir Quebec, followed with 27 percent and 19 seats. The separatist Quebec Solidaire party won 2 seats.

A party needs to obtain 63 of the 125 seats to form a majority.

Before the shooting incident, Charest, who lost his own assembly seat, had congratulated Marois for becoming Quebec's first woman premier. He noted that she would be leading a minority government and said the results speak "to the fact that the future of Quebec lies within Canada." He did not indicate whether he intended to step down as Liberal leader after the defeat.

Earlier, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper congratulated Marois on her victory but said he did not believe the results meant most Quebecers favor separation.

"We do not believe that Quebecers wish to revisit the old constitutional battles of the past," Harper said in a statement.

Harper's office had no immediate reaction to the shooting at the Parti Quebecois rally.

Although a number of candidates from the smaller parties are separatists, a minority government means "the more radical things in the party platform are going to be dead on arrival," said Bruce Hicks, a political science professor at Concordia University in Montreal.

Charest called the election more than a year before he had to, citing unrest in the streets due to this spring's student protests over tuition hikes. The most sustained student protests ever to take place in Canada began in February, resulting in about 2,500 arrests.

Marois, 63, was first elected to Quebec's National Assembly in 1981. She retired in 2006 but returned to become PQ leader a year later after her predecessor lost to Charest in an election that landed the PQ in third place. She in turn lost to Charest in 2008 but the 54-year-old Liberal leader seems to have lost his bet when he called early elections in August seeking a fourth mandate.

It's not the first time there has been political violence in Quebec related to tensions between the French and English. In the 1970s Canadian soldiers were deployed to the streets of Quebec because of a spate of terrorism by a group demanding independence from Canada. In 1970, the shadowy militant FLQ demanded "total independence" from Canada. Its members kidnapped and killed Quebec's labor minister and later abducted, then freed, a British diplomat.

The subsequent "October Crisis" was considered one of the darkest periods in modern Canadian history. Canadian troops patrolled the streets of Quebec and jailed alleged FLQ sympathizers, most of whom were later found innocent of having any FLQ ties.

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State police: Va. Tech gunman acted alone

  By ZINIE CHEN SAMPSONBLACKSBURG, Va. -- Investigators believe the gunman who killed a Virginia Tech policeman acted alone and that he changed clothes after fleeing the scene, then killed himself with his handgun when another officer spotted him, state police said Friday.

Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said investigators have not found anything connecting the gunman and the slain officer, Deriek W. Crouse, who was shot in his car on a campus parking lot after pulling over a driver for a traffic stop. The motive remains a mystery, she said.

"That's very much the fundamental part of the investigation right now," Geller said at a news conference.

The gunman was not a student at Virginia Tech, the scene of the deadliest gun rampage in modern U.S. history in 2007. Geller said investigators were confidant they know the gunman's identity but she declined to say anything more about his name, age or hometown until the medical examiner confirms his identity and next of kin are notified.

The campus shooting prompted officials to lock down the university for hours Thursday while police and SWAT teams searched the school.

Authorities have in-car video from officer Deriek W. Crouse's cruiser that shows a male suspect with a handgun at the officer's car at the time of the shooting.

Crouse was killed after pulling a driver over in a school parking lot. Police said the gunman was not involved in the traffic stop. Instead, he approached, shot the officer and then fled on foot before apparently killing himself in another.

The events unfolded on the same day Virginia Tech officials were in Washington, fighting a federal government fine over their handling of the 2007 massacre where 33 people were killed. The shooting brought back painful memories. About 150 students gathered silently for a candlelight vigil on a field facing the stone plaza memorial for the 2007 victims. An official vigil is planned for Friday night.

Crouse was an Army veteran and married father of five children and stepchildren who joined the campus police force in October 2007. He previously worked at a jail and for the Montgomery County sheriff's department.

Crouse was one of about 50 officers on the campus force, which also has 20 full- and part-time security guards. Crouse received an award in 2008 for his commitment to the department's drunken driving efforts. He was trained as a crisis intervention officer and as a general, firearms and defensive tactics instructor.

The university also said its counseling center would be open all day Friday for students.

"A lot of people, especially toward the beginning, were scared," said Jared Brumfield, a 19-year-old freshman from Culpeper, Va., who was locked in the Squires Student Center.

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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, Kimberly Hefling and Ben Nuckols in Washington; Michael Felberbaum, Larry O'Dell, Steve Szkotak, Bob Lewis and Dena Potter in Richmond, Va.; and Brock Vergakis in Norfolk, Va., contributed to this report

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