Coroner's office: 5 dead in Cleveland shooting

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(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-03-06 14:49

CLEVELAND -- Police were searching Thursday night for a man who fled on foot from a west side residential neighborhood after a shooting in which five people, including children, were killed and at least one other person was wounded.

Cleveland police officers block East 89th St. in Cleveland after a multiple-shooting Thursday, March 5, 2009. Police were searching for a suspect after five people were killed and others wounded in a shooting on the city's west side. [Agencies]

Police SWAT, vice and gang units and a police helicopter swarmed on the two-family home on a street of older, mostly two-story frame homes and some apartment buildings. A police helicopter assisted in the search and authorities were checking transit system buses.

A few people were milling around, some who were curious and some who claimed to be family and friends of those killed.

One man said he was distraught and came to the area because his daughter lives on the street. He said she sent him an unusual cell phone text message at 7:47 pm saying "Call me, live your life, love it." The shootings happened around 8 pm.

"Then I tried to call her about 12 times, and there never was an answer," said the man, Lamar Arnold. He said his daughter has two sons and a daughter.

Arnold was at a police blockade, trying to get to the house where the shootings occurred. He said he believed some of the victims were family members.

"They told me both my daughters and my grandchildren are dead," he said, although it was not clear who had told him that. "I don't want to talk about it; I just want to go to my grandson now. I want to see how he is, and that's all I care about now."

Arnold said he recognized the suspect in a police photo that was shown on television, and said the man was married to his daughter, who lived with her three children and with another of Arnold's daughters and that woman's twins.