From today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette:
A man armed with a revolver shot and killed Arkansas Democratic Party Chairman Bill Gwatney at party headquarters in Little Rock late Wednesday morning, then led police on a 34-mile chase before confronting officers, who shot and killed him less than an hour later.
A member of the state Senate for a decade and the owner of three auto dealerships, Gwatney, 48, died at 3:59 p.m. at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Medical Center.
“We do not have any indication that the gunman knew Chairman Gwatney,” Little Rock police Lt. Terry Hastings said during a press briefing Wednesday afternoon.
Authorities identified the gunman as Timothy Dale Johnson, 50, of Searcy. Johnson was flown from where police shot him in the Grant County city of Sheridan to Baptist Health Medical Center in Little Rock, where he was pronounced dead.
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Coverage in AP here.
USA Today's On Deadline blog:
... Police say they have no idea why Johnson then drove to Little Rock and shot the Democratic leader. KARK-TV reports that there are no known ties between the two men. (Here's a timeline of yesterday's events.)
The Daily Citizen says investigators searched Johnson's house in Searcy, Ark., a few hours after police shot him to death south of the capital.
“There was a large amount of ammunition found inside the house consistent with some of the weapons the suspect had down in Grant County,” Sgt. Greg Coney, a spokesman for the sheriff's department, tells the paper.
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