Multiple people shot near Milwaukee-area mall; authorities check for possible bomb
Updated at 3:14 p.m. ET: Police were looking for a suspect after several people were shot at a hair salon near a mall Sunday morning in the Milwaukee area, witnesses and police said.
Authorities were investigating a suspicious device that was left in or near the salon, which is across the street from Brookfield Square in Brookfield, about 10 miles west of Milwaukee. Bomb squads and FBI tactical and hostage teams were on the scene, authorities told NBC News.
Four people were being treated at Froedtert Memorial Hospital, none of them in critical condition, and three more were expected, Beth Strohbusch, a spokeswoman for the hospital, told NBC News.
No children were believed to have been injured, according to the hospital, which was on lockdown with the gunman at loose.
Witnesses said the shootings happened either at or near the Azana Salon and Spa, across Moorland Road from the mall. Brookfield Square was closed as SWAT team members scoured the area for the suspect, identified as Radcliff Franklin Haughton, 45, of Brown Deer, about 15 miles north of Milwaukee. He was described as an "ethnic" male, 6 feet, 2 inches tall, weighing about 210 pounds and last seen wearing a grey sweater with blue jeans and carrying a white and black backpack.
Police were surrounding Haughton's home in Brown Deer, NBC station WTMJ of Milwaukee reported.
Two workers at the salon said he was the estranged husband of one of their co-workers, a hairstylist. They said they didn't know whether he had left or was still in another part of the building.
An eyewitness, Jenny Remshak, told WTMJ that she was parked nearby when she saw a woman "crawling out of the building, and she rolled over to the cops, and they picked her up and took her right away in the ambulance."
A few minutes later, "about 10 people come running out of the building, screaming," Remshak said.
"Everybody was just grabbing their hearts and covering their mouths and watching in fear," she said.
It was the second mass shooting in the Milwaukee area in just 2½ months. A gunman opened fire at a Sikh temple near Milwaukee on Aug. 5, killing six people and wounding at least three others, before being shot to death.
Three people were killed and a fourth was injured last week when a gunman stormed a hair salon in Casselberry, Fla. The gunman then killed himself.
Posted By: Siebra Muhammad
Sunday, October 21st 2012 at 6:17PM
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