Nevada IHOP Shooting Kills 5, Including Suspect

Officers look through a bullet-damaged window of an IHOP restaurant in Carson City, Nev. on Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2011. Seven people were wounded after a gunman opened fire at the restaurant, authorities said. (AP Photo/Cathleen Allison)

The death toll from a Carson City, Nevada, restaurant shooting spree rose to five, including the suspected shooter, officials said Wednesday.

A man armed with a version of an AK-47 rifle opened fire Tuesday on people as they ate breakfast at the Carson City International House of Pancakes, killing two Nevada National Guard members and a civilian at the scene before he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, CNN reported.

A fourth guardsmen died later in a hospital.

Eleven people total were shot, UPI.com reported.

Law enforcement officials identified the suspected gunman as Eduardo Sencion, 32, of Carson City. Authorities said they hadn't determined a motive.

Carson City Sheriff Ken Furlong said investigators decided Sencion shot indiscriminately and did not target the guardsmen, who were sitting together at a table at the rear of the restaurant, ABC News reported.

However, the National Guard's base commander said he has ordered soldiers not to wear their uniforms off base and has beefed up security on base, ABC said.

Furlong said Sencion was a Mexico-born U.S. citizen with no criminal serious record but a history of mental illness.

The sheriff identified those killed by the shooter as National Guard Maj. Heath Kelly, 35, Sgt. First Class Christian Riege, 39, Sgt. First Class Miranda McElheney, 38, and civilian Florence Donovan Gunderson, 67. Gunderson's husband, a former Marine, was among the wounded.

Furlong said some of the victims had "extremely life-threatening" wounds. The shooting began shortly before 9 a.m. Tuesday. When they arrived, law enforcement personnel said the shooting suspect was identified as a man lying wounded in the parking lot. The suspect kept shooting in the parking lot after exiting the restaurant, Furlong said. Officials said they recovered the AK-47, an empty 30-round ammunition magazine and two other magazines. Furlong said a pistol and an assault rifle also were found in the parking lot. "There was blood everywhere; broken glass everywhere," Steven Martin, a witness, told KRNV-TV, Reno. "It was just a war zone down there." The sheriff likened the shooting spree's impact on his community to that of a major terrorist attack. "Yesterday in Carson City was not unlike 9/11," Furlong said, referring to the 2001 terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington and a jetliner that went down in Pennsylvania. "Families, communities, and the entire nation have been affected by what happened here."
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