A man who fatally shot six people at a Colorado birthday party before killing himself was upset because he was not invited to the weekend gathering thrown by his girlfriend’s family, police said on Tuesday, calling the shooting an act of domestic violence.
The shooter, 28-year-old Teodoro Macias, had been in a relationship with one of the victims, 28-year-old Sandra Ibarra, for about a year and had history of controlling and jealous behavior, Colorado Springs Police Department’s Lieutenant Joe Frabbiele told a news conference.
There were no reported incidents of domestic violence during the relationship and the shooter did not have a criminal history, police said.
Photo: AP
No protective orders were in place.
“At the core of this horrific act is domestic violence,” Colorado Springs Police Chief Vince Niski said, adding that the gunman had “displayed power and control issues” in the relationship.
About a week before the shooting, there was another family gathering where there “was some sort of conflict” between the family and Macias, Niski said.
The other victims of the shooting early on Sunday last week were Ibarra’s extended family.
Investigators do not yet know how the shooter got the weapon, which Frabbiele described as a Smith & Wesson handgun.
It was originally purchased in 2014 by someone else at local gun store, but was not reported stolen, he said.
The gunman had two 15-round magazines, one of which was empty, and police recovered 17 spent shells at the scene.
The shooting occurred at a home in the Canterbury Mobile Home Park on the east side of Colorado’s second-largest city.
Three children at the party, ages two, five and 11, were not hurt.
All were orphaned and were transferred to the custody of relatives, Frabielle said.
“In Colorado, we’ve had domestic terrorism incidents where lots of people were killed, we’ve had random acts like going into a King Soopers or a movie theater, but let’s not forget about the lethality of domestic violence,” Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers said.
The weekend attack follows a series of mass shootings — defined as four or more dead, not including the shooter — to plague the US this year.
Before the Colorado Springs shooting, a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University showed there had been at least 11 mass shootings since Jan. 1, compared with just two public mass shootings last year.
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