US serviceman charged in deadly shooting at Illinois Bowling Alley

The suspect in a fatal shooting at a bowling alley in Illinois was an active member of the US military from Florida, the police said Sunday morning.

The suspect, Duke Webb, 37, was taken into custody Saturday night in the shooting that killed three people and wounded three others in the city of Rockford, officials said.

Webb was charged with three counts of murder and three counts of attempted first-degree murder.

“We believe this is a completely random act,” the Rockford police chief, Dan O’Shea, said at a news conference Sunday. He said there was no known association or prior involvement of the gunman and the victims.

All six victims were shot, the chief said. Three men, ages 73, 65 and 69, were killed.

A 14-year-old male was shot in the face and was in stable condition. A 16-year-old female was shot in the shoulder and was treated and later released, and a 62-year-old man had multiple gunshot wounds and was in critical condition, O’Shea said.

The identities of those killed and wounded were not immediately available.

Officers responded to calls of shots fired at 6:55 p.m. local time. When officers arrived at the bowling alley, Don Carter Lanes, the gunman was still in the building, the chief said.

He said that officers did not fire their weapons and that the gunman tried to obscure his identity but he did not elaborate. He said two handguns, which the gunman tried to hide, were recovered at the scene. The chief declined to comment on a motive, and it was not clear what Webb was doing in Illinois.

“Pray Please,” Don Carter Lanes, which is about 90 miles northwest of Chicago, wrote on Facebook.

And in a separate post, it wrote: “A heinous act of violence by an evil coward took innocent life tonight. The entire bowling community mourns the senseless loss of life and prays for the families.”

Tom McNamara, the mayor of Rockford, said on Facebook that he was “angered and saddened by the violence tonight at Don Carter Lanes.”