News Service from House Harris

US: Police chief says Binghamton gunman wore body armour

BINGHAMTON, New York, April 4 AP - The gunman who killed 13 people in a rampage at an immigrant community centre and then committed suicide was wearing body armour, indicating he was prepared to do battle with law enforcers, the Binghamton police chief said.

The gunman, 41-year-old Jiverly Wong, had been taking classes at the American Civic Association, which helps immigrants assimilate, until last month, Police Chief Joseph Zikuski said on Saturday.

Wong parked his car against the back door of the community centre, burst through the front doors and shot two receptionists, killing one, and then took most of his victims into a classroom.

The receptionist who survived played dead, then called police despite her injuries and stayed on the line while the gunman remained in the building, the police chief said.

"He must have been a coward," Zikuski said, speculating that he decided to turn the gun on himself when he heard sirens.

"He had a lot of ammunition on him, so thank God before more lives were lost, he decided to do that," Zikuski said.

He earlier called the receptionist, 61-year-old Shirley DeLucia, a "hero in her own right".

Investigators said they had yet to establish a motive for the shooting. It was at least the sixth fatal mass shooting in the US in the past month, and the nation's deadliest since April 2007, when 32 people and a gunman died at Virginia Tech.

The shootings took place in a neighbourhood of homes and small businesses in downtown Binghamton, a city of about 47,000 situated 225km northwest of New York City.

Wong had a permit for the two handguns he used, and most of the victims had multiple gunshot wounds, Zikuski said.

The body armour indicates that "at one point in his thinking process that he was going to take the police on or at least try to stop us from stopping him", Zikuski said.

The gunman's actions were no surprise to Wong's family, the chief said. Wong, who used the alias Jiverly Voong, believed people close to him were making fun of him for his poor English language skills, he said.

Wong was ethnically Chinese but from Vietnam, a friend said on Saturday. He was angry about recently losing a job at a Shop-Vac assembly plant, couldn't find other work and complained that his unemployment benefit checks were only $US200 ($A280) a week, said Hue Huynh, a Binghamton grocery store proprietor whose husband worked with Wong years ago.

Wong, who moved to the United States in the early 1990s, had driven a truck in California before recently returning to Binghamton, only to lose a job there, Huynh said.

"He's upset he don't have a job here. He come back and want to work," she said. Her husband tried to cheer him by telling him he was still young and there was plenty of time to find work, but he complained about his "bad luck", she said.

On Friday, Wong barricaded the American Civic Association community centre's back door with his car, walked in the front and started shooting with two handguns. Within minutes, a receptionist, a teacher and 11 immigrants taking a citizenship class were dead.

DeLucia feigned death after she was shot and called the emergency dispatcher to get police to the scene within two minutes. Zikuski said she stayed on the phone for 90 minutes, "feeding us information constantly" despite a serious wound to the abdomen.

DeLucia was in critical condition at a hospital on Saturday, along with another victim in the same condition and another in serious condition. A fourth victim was in stable condition at another hospital.

Thirty-seven others made it out, including 26 who hid in a basement boiler room while police tried to determine whether the gunman was still alive and whether he was holding any hostages, Zikuski said.

The chief defended the time it took officers to go into the building - an hour to 90 minutes.

"If some crazy lunatic decides to pick up a gun and go someplace and start shooting people, I really don't have the answer how long for us that could prevent anything like that," Zikuski said.

"What I will tell you is that the police did the right thing," he said. "We have procedures and protocols."

Wong was found dead in an office with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, a satchel containing ammunition slung around his neck, authorities said.

Police found two handguns - a 9mm and a .45-calibre - and a hunting knife. Both guns are listed on a permit he obtained in 1996 or 1997, Zikuski said.

State police got tips suggesting that Wong may have been planning a bank robbery in 1999, possibly to support a crack-cocaine addiction, Zikuski said. But the robbery never happened, and Zikuski had no other information.

The attack at the American Civic Association, which helps immigrants settle in this country, came just after 10am as people from all over the globe - Latin America, China, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Africa - gathered for English and citizenship lessons in an effort to become a bigger part of their new home.

A string of attacks in the US in the last month left 47 people dead in all.

A gunman killed 10 people and himself in Samson, Alabama; shootings that began with a traffic stop in Oakland, California, left four police officers and the gunman dead; an apparent murder-suicide in Santa Clara, California, left six dead; and a gunman went on a rampage at a nursing home last Sunday, killing seven elderly residents and a nurse who cared for them.

On Saturday, three Pittsburgh police officers responding to a domestic disturbance call were killed by a man who had reportedly recently lost his job and was fearful about a potential ban on guns by the Obama administration.

The Binghamton region was the home to Endicott-Johnson shoe company and the birthplace of IBM, which between them employed tens of thousands of workers before the shoe company closed a decade ago and IBM downsized in recent years.