KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A man driving a dead woman's car shot a police officer, then opened fire in a parking lot and a mall Sunday, authorities said. By the end of the day, four people, including the gunman, were dead.
The chaos ended when police shot the gunman to death outside a Target store inside Ward Parkway Center in south Kansas City, police spokesman Tony Sanders said.
The gunfire sent shoppers and employees scurrying for cover. Target employee Cassie Bradshaw, 19, of Kansas City was in a break room with two other people when they first heard shots. Then, her co-workers saw a man in his 50s with a rifle "shooting everywhere," she said.
"It sounded like maybe firecrackers at first but then they got louder and louder and louder, and it sounded like someone shooting a gun," she said.
The string of violence began early Sunday afternoon, when police went to a home to check on an elderly woman relatives hadn't seen for days. The woman was found dead and her car missing, Sanders said.
The car was spotted later in the day at a gas station by an officer, who pulled the driver over and was shot in the arm, police said. The officer, whose wound was not life-threatening, returned fire and shattered the window of the gunman's car.
The car took off and reports began arriving about 10 to 15 minutes later of shots fired at the shopping center. The man pulled into a parking space and fired at the cars on either side of him, killing two people, authorities said. He fired more shots, wounding at least two people, then went inside the mall, Sanders said.
"Everybody was leaving the mall when the officers ran inside," Sanders said. "They confronted the man and after confronting him, shot and killed him."
Although witnesses reported hearing shots inside the mall, Sanders could not immediately confirm it.
"We have hundreds and hundreds of witnesses we have to interview and try to determine that," he said.
Police did not say how the elderly woman died, or if the gunman was a suspect in her death. But they did say they believed the events were connected.
The mall, one of the city's busiest shopping centers, was shut down and officers went through each store to see if anyone else might have been involved, Sanders said. The gunman and victims' names were not immediately released, and conditions of the wounded were not available.
The wounded officer was treated at an area hospital and released, but the conditions of the other wounded people were not available.
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On the Net:
http:/ / www.wardparkwaycenter.com
Ward Parkway, split by Brush Creek in the Country Club Plaza near its eastern terminus

A gunman killed three people and wounded two others Sunday after a shooting occurred at the Ward Parkway shopping center in Kansas City, Missouri. The shooting took place at around 4 p.m. local time (2200 UTC). The gunman fired shots from the parking lot, then entered the mall and continued shooting. He himself was then shot, presumably by local police.