Gunman kills five in Missouri city hall

He was convicted in 2006 of disorderly conduct after twice disrupting city council meetings. Thornton had complained that his contracting business was being harassed by city officials and at one meeting he repeatedly called Mayor Swoboda a "jackass" before being hauled away.

Swoboda, the mayor since 2000 and a council member dating to 1976, was due to leave office within months.


After the shooting, local television station KMOV-TV interviewed Gerald Thornton, the gunman's brother.

"My brother went to war tonight with the people and government that were putting torment and strife into his life and he ended it," Gerald Thornton said. "I'm OK with it."

A lawsuit by Thornton charging that his constitutional rights of free speech were violated at the meetings was dismissed last month by a federal judge.

Mass shootings are not particularly rare in the United States. In December, a 19-year-old gunman in Omaha, Nebraska, killed eight people and then himself at a shopping mall, and on Saturday a man robbing a clothing store outside Chicago shot five women to death. He has not yet been caught.