One person was killed and two others wounded in the northern city of Rockford before a barricaded suspect died by what appeared to be a “self-inflicted” gunshot wound, the police said.
A burst of violence on Sunday morning at a Super 8 motel in Northern Illinois ended with one person killed, two others wounded and a suspect who was barricaded for hours inside the building dead of what appeared to be a “self-inflicted” gunshot wound, the authorities said.
The shootings began shortly after midnight at the motel on Colosseum Drive in the city of Rockford, which is situated on the banks of the Rock River, and a suspect engaged in an hourslong standoff with police officers who responded to the scene, the authorities said.
The police chief, Dan O’Shea, said in a statement that a SWAT team had responded to the initial shooting, and that officers discovered two people with gunshot wounds. A third victim was “pronounced deceased, also from gunshots,” he said. The wounded were being treated at a hospital; their condition was not immediately clear.
No further information about the victims, the suspect or a possible motive for the shootings were released. It was not clear if other people were in the motel.
Reports of the shooting emerged about an hour and a half after midnight, when the Rockford Police on Twitter urged people to avoid the area. The standoff continued for hours after the police arrived at the scene, the chief said, with the suspect trading gunfire with officers. The suspect was later found dead, the police said in a tweet.
It was the second deadly shooting episode in the city in a matter of hours. A 21-year-old man was killed just before 10 p.m. on Saturday at a Stop-N-Go store, according to the police and local news reports.
The police said he had his state weapons permit revoked years ago because of a felony assault conviction. But Mr. Martin’s gun — a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun with a laser sight — was never taken away.
