Six people have been killed in linked shootings in the city of Bakersfield in California, police say.
A man and his wife drove to a trucking business in the city, where the man shot dead two men and his wife.
The man then drove to another residence where he shot dead two more people.
After hijacking a vehicle with a woman and child in it, the man was then confronted by a deputy and shot himself dead.
Police are still investigating the motives behind the killings.
Donny Youngblood of the Kern County Sheriff’s Department said deputies were called to the trucking business after reports of shots being fired at 17:20 local time (00:20 GMT) .
The deputies learned that the husband had confronted a man and then shot both him and his own wife.
Another man then appeared at the scene and the husband shot at him, before pursuing him and shooting him dead.
The husband then drove to a residence on Breckenridge Road and shot dead two people.
After carjacking a vehicle, the woman and child inside managed to escape.
The man pulled over after a deputy confronted him with a firearm and then shot himself dead.
The Sheriff’s Department said the shootings took only a short period of time and were not random.
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Aung San Suu Kyi defends verdict against Reuters journalists
Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi has defended the jailing of two Reuters journalists, despite international condemnation.
She said Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo had broken the law and their conviction had “nothing to do with freedom of expression at all.”
The two were sentenced for possession of police documents while investigating the killing of Rohingya Muslims.
Ms. Suu Kyi also said the army crackdown against the Rohingya could in hindsight have been handled differently.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate – who is not Myanmar’s elected president but is almost universally viewed as such – had been under intense pressure to comment on both the Rohingya crisis and more recently the journalists.
This week, a UN rights body accused Myanmar of “waging a campaign against journalists.”
Ms. Suu Kyi broke her silence on the issue on Thursday while attending an international economics conference in Vietnam.
In a speech, she said the case upheld the rule of law and suggested that many critics had not actually read the verdict.
The two had “every right to appeal the judgement and to point out why the judgement was wrong,” she said.
Human Rights Watch responded to Ms. Suu Kyi’s speech by saying that she “got it all wrong.”
“She fails to understand that real ‘rule of law’ means respect for evidence presented in court, actions brought based on clearly defined and proportionate laws, and independence of the judiciary from influence by the government or security forces,” Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson said.
“On all these counts, the trial of the Reuters journalists failed the test.”