Gunman kills 3, found dead in South Korean city: police

SEOUL (South Korea)  — A gunman shot and killed three people today (Feb 27) before he was found dead at a home in a city near the capital Seoul in the second such incident in three days, police officials said.

Shooting incidents are rare in South Korea, which tightly controls gun possession, and the two deadly shootings this week will likely trigger a debate on whether the country should tighten its control on hunting weapons that can be legally owned.

A police official from Hwaseong City, who didn't want to be named, citing office rules, said the victims included a policeman who was one of the first officers to arrive at the scene. The official said the suspect, 75, is believed to be the brother of an 86-year-old victim, whose wife, 84, was also dead.

The suspect was found dead with a gunshot wound in what the police believed to be a suicide. The daughter-in-law of the dead couple managed to escape by jumping from a second-floor window before alerting the police, and is currently being treated at a hospital for a minor back injury. All four were found in the first-floor living room.

Police said the murder weapon was believed to be a hunting gun. The gunman had retrieved the gun from a nearby police station about an hour before the shooting, the police official said.

South Koreans can obtain licenses for shotguns and air rifles for the purpose of hunting animals, but they are required to keep the weapons at police stations and use them only during legal hunting periods. It wasn't immediately clear whether the suspect owned the gun or had a proper license for it.

The incident follows another shooting on Wednesday (Feb 25) when a gunman shot and killed three people in Sejong City in the central part of the country before apparently killing himself.

According to figures from the National Police Agency, South Koreans legally owned about 160,000 guns as of January, a figure that included hunting weapons and self-defense tools such as gas-emitting guns.

The police agency said today it plans to tighten regulations on gun ownership, including strengthening the screening of people seeking to license a weapon and shortening license renewal periods.

Murders involving guns are rare in South Korea, with accidents from hunting and other leisure activities accounting for most gun-related deaths, although the agency could not immediately provide any statistics.

But there has been a spate of shooting deaths among soldiers in recent years. Last year, a conscript soldier in a frontline army unit killed five colleagues, telling investigators he had been bullied by the victims. Earlier shooting rampages at other frontline units in 2005 and 2011 left 12 soldiers dead.  AP