Police have arrested a US federal law enforcement officer suspected in a two-day shooting rampage in the state of Maryland near Washington, DC, which left three people dead and three others wounded.
Eulalio Sevilla Tordil, 62, a police officer with the US Department of Homeland Security's Federal Protective Service, was arrested Friday in a doughnut shop, police said.
He is suspected of killing his wife and shooting a bystander on Thursday in Beltsville, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC.
Tordil's estranged wife, Gladys, a high school chemistry teacher, was shot as she went to pick up their two daughters from another school.
Around 11 am Friday morning, Tordil allegedly shot and killed one man outside the Westfield Montgomery mall in Bethesda, Maryland, according to police. A man and woman were also wounded in the shooting.
About half an hour later, Tordil allegedly killed a woman at the Aspen Hill Shopping Center in Silver Spring, some 8 miles (13 km) away.
Tordil was suspended from his federal job, having surrendered his gun and badge after his wife obtained a protective order to keep him away, an official with the Federal Protective Service said.
The latest gun violence revived memories of the "Beltway sniper" attacks of 2002, which resulted in the death of 10 people.
The three-week Beltway sniper ordeal rattled Washington and its suburbs until John Allen Muhammad, a US military veteran, and Lee Boyd Malvo, were captured. Malvo was sentenced to life and Muhammad was executed in 2009.
"Today's incident was very reminiscent of fear that permeated throughout our communities during the 2002 sniper shootings," Prince George's County Executive Rushern L. Baker III said in a statement on the county government website. "It was also another harsh reality of the terror that gun violence can create."
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