Domestic dispute provoked Washington shootout that killed 5

Many Americans see shootouts as "amusements" or "manly rites of passage."  I see gunfire as the most fundamental form of terror and believe that anyone who initiates harmful gunfire is properly considered a terrorist. Last Monday, three people were killed at the Boston Marathon and the entire nation went nuts. Today, five people were killed in a Seattle shootout - and no one gives a shit. The most discernible difference between these two episodes of carnage is that the Boston killings were probably grounded in revolutionary political rationalization, whereas the Seattle killings – like the rest of America’s  32,000 annual gun killings -- are vicious acts by people too stupid, too lazy or too indifferent to bother themselves with attempted rationalization. Last year, accidental gun deaths in the United States were twice the total number of gun deaths -- deliberate and accidental -- in Japan, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Sweden and Israel together. Americans have grown so habituated to a state of armed siege that we no longer see "random" gun violence as abnormal, much less terrorizing.

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Kim Hjelmgaard and Michael Winter, USA TODAY - April 22, 2013

Gunman kills girlfriend, three men before police shoot him dead outside apartment complex south of Seattle.

(Photo: Ted S. Warren, AP)

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Four men and a woman dead at apartment complex
• Gunman killed girlfriend, neighbor, two witnesses
• Officers arrive amid gunfire, kill suspect reaching for weapon

A domestic dispute triggered a deadly Sunday night rampage south of Seattle in which a gunman killed his girlfriend, two bystanders and a neighbor before being shot dead by police, authorities say.

Federal Way, Wash., police said the gunman — armed with a .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun and a pistol-grip shotgun — apparently was eliminating witnesses after he shot his 25-year-old girlfriend in the head at their Pinewood Village apartment about 9:30 p.m. PT, The Seattle Timesreported.

The killer next shot two men, one 23 and the other 46, in the parking lot. One died beside a car, the other was wounded and then "executed" a few yards away, police said.

One victim was identified as 23-year-old Ceasar Valdovinos, an unemployed warehouse worker and delivery driver who had a girlfriend and a child.

A Washington State Patrol trooper directs a driver away from a street blocked off several blocks from the scene of an overnight shooting that police said left five people dead at an apartment complex in Federal Way, Wash.(Photo: Ted S. Warren, AP)

Police Chief Brian Wilson said the gunman then apparently heard a 62-year-old neighbor yell for someone to call 911, so he blasted open the man's door with a shotgun and killed him with a second blast. That neighbor has not been identified.

Officers arrived amid gunfire and spotted the suspect in a stairwell, ordering him to drop his weapon. He refused, so police shot and wounded him, causing him to drop the shotgun. The suspect ran to the parking lot but fell to the ground near one of the men he had killed.

In all, eight officers fired their weapons.

Police killed the gunman when he reached for a handgun. He has not been officially identified, but sources told KOMO-TV he is 28-year-old Dennis Clark.

Wilson said the gunman had a concealed-carry permit and was the registered owner of at least two firearms, including the handgun he is alleged to have used to kill his girlfriend and the two men in the parking lot. Federal agents are investigating the history of the shotgun.

Federal Way, Washington state

Seattle and Federal Way police received reports of domestic violence involving verbal, not physical, abuse by the gunman, though none from the woman he is alleged to have killed. She also has not been identified.

Wilson said internal police records included a note of caution about the suspect's "history violence and tendency to carry weapons," KOMO reported.

Police said based on those reports there was no cause to arrest the man, who had no criminal record.

Jane Friedman had just sold a family farm and moved into the complex when the gunfire erupted.

"I can't believe it. I'm in shock," she told the Times. "This was my first night here."

After searching an apartment complex, police say there are no more victims or suspects in a shooting that left five people dead, including a man shot by police in Federal Way, about 20 miles south of Seattle. (April 22)