Cop among 4 dead in Wisconsin shooting rampage

One shooter killed four people across three crime scenes in three small Wisconsin towns before being taken into custody following a standoff with a SWAT team. A police officer is among the dead.

Some questions remain following press conferences with Marathon County police, who declined to release the names of those killed. Just before 12:30pm Wednesday, police responded to a “domestic situation” at Marathon Savings Bank, and then about 30 minutes later, they returned to the bank to find two people shot. The suspect had since fled the scene, WAOW reported.

Several hours later, the suspect was in custody, and it was determined that four people had been shot dead by the suspect, including an unidentified officer of the Everest Metro Police Department.

Following the shooting at the bank, the suspect reportedly shot at the Tlusty, Kennedy and Dirks law office in Schofield, then traveled about five miles to the Aspen Street Apartments in Weston. It was about 1:30pm when the apartment complex became the focus of most of the day’s police activity, including the use of bomb detecting robots and the standoff with SWAT officers.

For several hours, lockdown orders affected schools and a hospital. DC Everest Schools was back open after 4:00pm, while two schools closer to the apartments remained locked down, eventually moving their students to another school around 5:00pm, WAOW reported. Mount Olive Lutheran Church, located in the same town as the apartments, reportedly opened its chapel for prayer between 7:00pm and 9:00pm.

Gunshots were heard during the standoff just before 5:00pm, USA Today’s Wausau Daily Herald reported. Within 15 minutes, an ambulance sped from the apartment complex, and the standoff seemed to conclude, according to the Herald.

SWAT officers entered the apartment complex just before 2:30pm, the Herald reported, to evacuate residents.

According to the Associated Press, a deputy administrator of the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s Division of Criminal Investigation, Jason Smith, says over 100 police officers are investigating and will make public more details on Thursday.

Everest Metro Police, which lost one of its officers Wednesday, had 27 officers on its force and worked in Schofield and Weston, the AP reported. The three towns the shootings took place in have a total population of around 22,400, and the wider area known as Wausau had a population of less than 40,000, according to the 2010 census.