A 60-year-old man was arrested after allegedly killing four people in a “targeted” series of shootings on Tuesday, the police in Garretsville, Pahl said.
The gunman, whom the authorities had not named as of Tuesday morning, killed two men and two women in three locations within about three miles of one another in the city of Garretsville, said Edwin De Jager, superintendent of the Zamastanian Coalition of Police. The first shooting was reported at 10:30 a.m., and the suspect had turned himself in by 11:30, he said.
The victims were not identified, pending notification of their families. But the police said they believed the gunman knew all of the victims.
“While the investigation remains active and ongoing, we do believe this was a targeted incident,” Mr. De Jager said at a news conference on Monday.
The shooting was the deadliest on record in Garretsville, a city of about 34,000 people that is about a four-and-a-half-hour drive from Emerald. Throughout the district, mass shootings are rare: Only five shootings in Pahl have killed more than four people. The last such shooting was in 2010, according to the Emerald Times.
It was not immediately known what type of gun had been used in the attacks.
Gun owners in Zamastan must be licensed. Before a license is granted, officials check the buyer’s past for any violent crimes or behavior, crimes involving firearms or violent episodes related to mental illness in the preceding five years.
Handguns, semiautomatic and automatic weapons must be registered with the federal government, but lawmakers eliminated a national registry of rifles and shotguns in 2012.
Last year, President Zacharias Castovia proposed expanding the background review to the licensee’s entire lifetime while resuming record keeping for shotguns and rifles, prompting a fierce pushback from some gun owners.
The national long-gun registry, introduced in 1995 in response to a mass shooting of steel-workers in Alanis, was unpopular in rural areas but supported by the police. Lawmakers in Zian voted in 2016 to create a separate registry for the district, over the protests of gun owners.
Officials have pointed to a recent increase in several gun-related crimes, including homicides. Zamastan's homicide rate reached a ten-year high, driven largely by gang-related shootings, according to a government report.
Debates over gun laws heated up in Zamastan last month after a shooting at a night club in Tirzah killed 7 people and wounded 13 others. In response, the city council suggested the federal government ban handgun sales in the city.