3 dead after shootings at Kansas City-area Jewish centers

Authorities are investigating whether the shootings were a hate crime, Overland Park Police Chief John Douglass told reporters. "It's too early in the investigation to try to label it. We know it's a vicious act of violence. Obviously, at two Jewish facilities, one might make that assumption, but we're going to have to know more about it," he said. The shootings occurred at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City in Overland Park, Kansas, and at the Village Shalom Retirement Community in Leawood, Kansas, CNN reports. Authorities arrested the suspect at a nearby elementary school after the shootings, Douglass said. The suspected shooter, a man in his 70s, is not from Kansas and did not appear to know his victims, he said. Police are investigating statements that the suspect made after his arrest, Douglass said. The police chief declined to provide additional details. CNN affiliates reported that the suspect shouted anti-Semitic comments as he was led away. A shotgun was involved in the shootings, Douglass said. Authorities are investigating whether other weapons were also involved. The FBI is at the scene working with local authorities investigating the shootings, FBI spokesman Joel Sealer said. Police haven't released the identities of the suspect or the people he allegedly gunned down. Rabbi Herbert Mandl, a chaplain for the Overland Park Police Department, said the victims included a teenager and an elderly woman. The shootings, which occurred the night before Passover begins, sound "very much like a hate crime," he said. "The timing is terrible. The timing is awful," Mandl said. "From what I understand from my contacts, this is a one-person event, and this is hopefully under control now." One shooting occurred in the Overland Park community center's parking lot, the center said in a Facebook post. The community center was packed with young people participating in weekend activities, like auditions for a singing competition and a rehearsal for a production of "To Kill a Mockingbird," CNN affiliates reported. "This was a community center full of young teens, and they were on lockdown after the shots started," CNN affiliate KSHB reporter Lisa Benson told CNN. "Some of these kids were taken into locker rooms and told to lay on the floor as the shots rang out." Jeff Nessel told the Kansas City Star he had just dropped his 10-year-old son off at the community center when a staff member told him to get back inside because there had been a shooting. "We'll keep you on lockdown. You're safe here," Nessel said a staff member told him. "It's surreal," Nessel told the newspaper. "You don't think it can happen here." At the nearby Village Shalom retirement home, Amy Rasmussen was there to help do her grandmother's laundry when residents were warned by a staff member. People "were told by one of the staff that it was a tornado warning ... and stay away from the windows," Rasmussen told the newspaper. As word of the shooting spread, concerned friends and family came to the facility to check on their loved ones, KSHB reported.