Carnage in Carson City

Posted on Sep 7, 2011

AP / Cathleen Allison

Police and emergency personnel respond to the shooting at an IHOP restaurant in Carson City, Nev., on Tuesday.

A man with an AK-47 assault rifle killed four people and wounded six before killing himself with a shot to the head at an IHOP restaurant in Carson City, Nev.

The gunman, 32-year-old Eduardo Sencion, drove up to the pancake house in a blue minivan sporting a yellow “Support Our Troops” sticker around 9 a.m. As he got out of the van, witnesses said, he immediately began shooting and hit a woman standing nearby. Some reports said he reloaded at least once before heading for the restaurant. Once inside, witnesses said he headed straight for a group of five uniformed National Guard members eating breakfast, killing three of them and a 67-year-old woman who had been dining nearby with her husband.

The shooting came as a shock to residents of Carson City, especially because until Tuesday the state capital hadn’t seen a homicide in three years. Family members told police that Sencion had mental issues. —BF

CNN / WFMZ-TV:

A total of 11 people were shot Tuesday, Carson City, Nevada, Sheriff Ken Furlong said. They included five uniformed Army National Guard members and six civilians, including suspect Eduardo Sencion, 32.

Since the number of military members and civilians was nearly equal, “we cannot conclude at this time that our military forces were being specifically targeted,” Furlong told reporters.

Sencion was carrying an assault rifle and a pistol when he went into the IHOP Tuesday morning, Furlong said. A second assault rifle was located in his vehicle. Only the assault rifle was fired, the sheriff said. An empty 30-round gun magazine and two other magazines were also recovered, Furlong said Tuesday night.

Read more

More Below the Ad

New and Improved Comments

We are launching a major overhaul of our comments section.

In addition to more robust spam filtering and moderation, new features include the ability to rate other comments, sort how they are displayed and respond directly via e-mail or in a thread.

Unfortunately, commenters will lose their existing Truthdig identities. It's a pain, we know, but on the plus side you will now be able to log in with a plethora of options, including Google, Twitter, Facebook and Disqus accounts.

Before launching this system we spent months in discussion with our top commenters. We listened to the feedback and we hope you like what we've come up with.

Please direct any problems or concerns to us via our contact page.