Police release body-camera footage from California rail yard shooting

[June 02, 2021]    (Reuters) - Police on Tuesday released body-camera footage from the California rail yard shooting last week in which an employee gunned down nine co-workers and then killed himself, showing officers entering a building and finding the dead gunman.

The footage is about four and a half minutes long and is from a deputy who arrived minutes after the first shooting reports.

A "contact team" of deputies and San Jose police officers was formed to find the gunman, who was reported to be inside a building and armed with a handgun.

The footage shows the team cautiously climbing stairs to the third floor of the building, where a Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority supervisor emerges with arms raised and hands over his keycard so officers can get inside.

The five-member team sweeps into the building, guns raised and using gun-mounted flashlights, according to the footage. They pass through rooms and corridors to a dispatch center.

Four gunshots are heard. Reaching a door, one of them looks through a window and says: "I've got somebody down" inside.

The footage shows a man slumped in a chair with a gun in his hand.

The gunman was "highly disgruntled" long before carrying out the rampage, according to the county sheriff.

The attack was among at least nine U.S. mass shootings over the past three months that each claimed four or more lives. The United States saw at least 200 such shootings in the first 132 days of this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit research group.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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