GUNMAN KILLED IN STANDOFF AFTER BEING SOUGHT FOR CARWASH AND BARBERSHOP RAMPAGE THAT LEFT 4 DEAD & 2 WOUNDED

64-year-old Kurt Myers

Authorities in upstate New York say the suspected gunman in a rampage at a car wash and a barbershop that left four people dead and two wounded has been killed by police in a shootout.
They say 64-year-old Kurt Myers was killed Thursday by police who had surrounded a block of small businesses in the village of Herkimer in a nearly 19-hour standoff.
A police K-9 officer was also killed.
Yesterday, the 64-year-old loner sauntered into a barbershop in upstate New York, coolly asked if the man cutting hair remembered him and then opened fire with a shotgun, the first shots in a burst of violence that would leave four dead, two critically wounded and people in this small village aching to find out what set the gunman off.

New York state police vowed to wait out Myers, the man suspected of gunning down the victims then holing up in an abandoned building. Police kept vigilant watch there Thursday morning, periodically blaring sirens in an apparent attempt to encourage Myers to surrender, if alive. Booms also were heard.
Police said Thursday they are confident he is still in the building, but don't know if he's dead or alive.
John Seymour, one of the men wounded in the attacks told his sister, Mary Hornett, the barbershop attack came out of nowhere.
"He just said that the guys were in the barbershop and this guy comes in and he says, 'Hi John, do you remember me?' and my brother said, 'Yes, Kurt, how are you?' and then he just started shooting," Hornett said.
Hornett said her brother, who was hospitalized in critical condition, was doing well after being shot in the left hand and right hip.
"My brother couldn't think of any reason why he would do such a thing," she said of Myers, a former customer who hadn't been in the shop for a couple of years.
Officers were fired on from the abandoned building on Wednesday afternoon while looking for Myers, state police Superintendent Joseph D'Amico said. At least one officer returned fire.
"We're in no rush to bring this to a conclusion," D'Amico said, adding that the main objective was to make sure no one else was hurt.

The shootings shattered the peace and rattled the nerves of Mohawk and Herkimer, two small villages about 170 miles northwest of New York City, separated from each other by the Mohawk River and the New York State Thruway. Police snipers waited on rooftops on a block of small businesses in Herkimer as they waited for Myers to emerge.
Police said Myers' rampage started with a fire in his apartment in the nearby village of Mohawk at about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday. He then drove to John's Barber Shop around the corner and used a shotgun to kill two customers, D'Amico said, identifying them as Harry Montgomery, 68, and Michael Ransear, 57, a retired corrections officer. In addition to Seymour, the shop's owner, another customer, Dan Haslauer, also was listed in critical condition at a Utica hospital.
The gunman then drove to Gaffy's Fast Lube in nearby Herkimer and used the shotgun to kill Michael Renshaw and Thomas Stefka. Renshaw was a 23-year employee of the state corrections department who worked at Mid-State Correctional Facility near Utica. Stefka worked at Gaffey's and attended Mohawk Reform Church, where he played guitar during services.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in a press conference in Herkimer, called it "truly an inexplicable situation."
"There's no apparent motive to the best of our knowledge at this time to provoke these attacks," he said.