Man Who Killed 3 in Town Meeting Was Feuding With Officials, Police Say
The gunman, identified as 59-year-old Rockne Newell, randomly fired shots Monday night as he barged into the meeting, authorities said. He left long enough to get another weapon from his car and continued firing upon returning until he was subdued, police and witnesses said.
“I heard more than 10 shots,” Pocono Record reporter Chris Reber said in a first-person account. “It was automatic, like a string of firecrackers.”
Newell’s feud with the township revolved around living conditions at his ramshackle, trash-filled property in the Pocono Mountains.
Two people died at the scene, and a third person died after being flown to a hospital. Police confirmed that at least one of the dead was a township official but gave no details. A fourth person was undergoing surgery late Monday for undisclosed injuries.
State police said Newell had a long-running dispute with township officials over the dilapidated property. He said he lived on Social Security and could not afford to clean it.
Reber said he was at the township building Monday night when a man armed with a long gun with a scope shot through a wall into the meeting.
“The thing that got my attention: plaster flying out, blowing out through the walls. Witnesses would later tell me they saw pictures exploding away from the walls,” Reber said in his account told to his editors, Marta Gouger and Chris Mele.
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