Louisiana shooting: gunman opens fire on cinema audience

A "lone white male" gunman opened fire on a cinema audience in Louisiana yesterday evening, killing two people and injuring at least 12 others, before taking his own life.

Witnesses said the man had been seated in the Grand Theater in Lafayette, with around 100 others in the audience, for a screening of the comedy Trainwreck. After 20 minutes, he reportedly stood up and starting shooting at the audience with a semi-automatic handgun.

The attacker, who has been identified as a "drifter" from Alabama named John Russell Houser, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, said police.

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Lafayette Police Chief Jim Craft told a press conference in the early hours of this morning that investigators have multiple addresses for the 59-year-old suspect in different states and are following up on those leads.

Two officers responded to the "chaotic scene" in less than a minute as they were close to the theatre, said Craft. They entered as audience members fled and heard a single gunshot, which was Houser shooting himself.

Officers are working at the crime scene, where many people left shoes, bags and other items as they rushed to leave the cinema, reports New Orleans' daily newspaper the Times-Picayun.One witness, who had been buying popcorn at the time, said a group came out screaming for others to run. "Then we saw a lady with blood all over her leg. I just grabbed my child. I mean, we all ran," she said.The attack came as jurors in Colorado unanimously agreed that Aurora cinema gunman James Holmes should be eligible for the death penalty. In a similar case to last night's tragedy, Holmes sat among the audience during a screening of The Dark Knight in July 2012 before opening fire and killing 12 people and injuring 70 others.Last night's shooting also coincided with a BBC interview with Barack Obama, who spoke out against the nation's inability to fix its gun control issue.

He said he was "frustrated" that the US does not have "common sense gun safety laws, even in the face of repeated mass killings".