McCOMB, Miss. – A gunman shot two people to death Wednesday in the bank where his ex-wife worked, then took the ex-wife and killed her before committing suicide, authorities said.
The others killed were a customer and another employee of the Regions Bank branch in McComb, in southwestern Mississippi.
"It wasn't a bank robbery. It was a domestic situation," McComb police Chief Billie Hughes told the Enterprise-Journal of McComb.
For a time police blocked off the area around the bank and told people to stay inside.
Hughes said an armed man walked inside the bank shortly after 11 a.m., fatally shot two people, took his ex-wife hostage and fled in a car.
While police were at the bank, Hughes said, officers received a call that the hostage had been found dead along U.S. Highway 51 near Fernwood, about four miles south of McComb. He said the exact cause of the woman's death was being investigated.
Police said Pike County deputies were then called to the scene of a one-vehicle accident in Magnolia, a few more miles south on the highway. "That was the guy who had done the shooting," Hughes said.
Hughes said the gunman shot himself. He died at a McComb hospital, Pike County Coroner Percy Pittman said.
Hughes said all those involved were McComb residents, and that their names were being withheld pending notification of relatives.
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