LAS VEGAS - A camouflage-clad man roamed through a supermarket blasting with a shotgun today, killing four people and wounding one before being arrested by officers who talked him out of taking his own life.
Officers summoned by a 911 call from inside the suburban Albertsons market arrived as shots were still being fired, said Officer Steve Meriwether. They confronted a shaven-headed man with a goatee who walked out the front door toting a pump-action shotgun, he said.
"He put the gun to his head and the officers talked him out of it," the officer said.
The victims were all shot point-blank, Meriwether said. The surviving victim was in critical condition.
Zane Floyd, 23, a bar bouncer, onetime college student and former Marine whose family lives just two blocks from the supermarket, was arrested for investigation of murder.
Investigators don't believe robbery was the motive, but were baffled about what triggered the rampage, he said.
Lt. Rick Alba said police have not found any connection between the suspect and the victims - three men and a woman. Police received word of the shooting at 5:16 a.m.
Fearing the gunman had an accomplice, police took at least three hours to search and clear the store, eventually finding two employees hiding in a walk-in vegetable cooler where they had taken cover.
The bodies were found in different locations in the store, which is about two miles west of the casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, he said.
"We're just horrified by this. This is tragic, inexplicable and we are sickened by it," said Michael Read, vice president of public affairs at Albertsons' headquarters in Boise, Idaho.
The company, which has 995 stores in 25 states, sent a counseling team to help employees cope with the shooting.
Floyd had moved into a guesthouse attached to his parents' carport over the weekend, a friend said.
Homicide detectives questioned Floyd's parents, Mike and Valerie, at their nearby home and searched the guesthouse, carrying away two paper grocery bags of evidence and a rectangular case.
"They were great parents. He was like a model child," said neighbor Cathy Downey.
"That's all they talked about is when he would be coming home from leave. They did everything they could for him. He didn't want for anything," she said.
Floyd served four years in the Marine Corps at Camp Pendleton, Calif., and was honorably discharged in July 1998, said base spokesman Lt. Jeff Landis.
After the Marines, he started college but dropped out, Downey said. "It didn't last that long."
Floyd is a bouncer at Sneakers, a sports bar in Las Vegas, said Tony Marquez, a fellow bouncer who drove up, ran into the house and spoke briefly with the parents.
Marquez said that over the weekend, he helped Floyd move out of an apartment he shared with a male roommate and into the parents' guesthouse.
Floyd had a girlfriend and was popular at the bar, his buddy said.
"He's a regular 23-year-old guy who likes to party and hang out just like me," Marquez said. "I don't understand what happened, I just don't understand it."
The elder Floyd works for EG&G Special Projects, a government contractor in Las Vegas. His boss, who identified himself only as Mr. Carey, said he was trying to help console the family.
"They're in shock. They want to know how this happened. Their thoughts are with the victims," he said.
"They were talking about how you always hear about this stuff happening but you never thought it would happen to you. They're devastated. It's their only son. ... They don't want to say anything," he added.
After the man began firing, two women employees, aged 20 and 34, hid for three hours in a produce cooler before they were discovered by police.
"They were very upset from the whole incident. They were very cold, they were inside the cooler. We are trying to get them warm," said Kathi Rice, a spokeswoman for American Medical Response, an ambulance service.
The supermarket is located in a shopping mall with about 20 other stores at one of the city's busiest intersections. Police cordoned off the area.
Across from the store's parking lot, Albertsons employees and family members gathered at Carl's Jr. restaurant, surrounded by police and store officials. Some were crying as they embraced.
At the Floyd home, Ms. Downey's grandson, J.R. Schmahl, 14, remembered the times he and Floyd spent playing basketball or catching lizards in the desert.
"He was my homey before he went to the Marines. Before we were really close friends, but after he got older and he came back, we weren't."
He added: "He was a normal kid, he wasn't even that much of a fighter."
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