A lone gunman began shooting Friday in an immigration services building in Binghamton, New York, killing at least four people, a law enforcement source close to the situation said.
Armed law enforcement officers gather at the scene of Friday’s shootings in Binghamton, New York.
unded.Police on the scene told CNN affiliate WBNG-TV that up to 12 people were killed in the shooting.
A man began shooting in the American Civic Association, which helps immigrants and refugees, the source said.
The source said there may have been 20 to 40 people taken hostage.
The American Civic Association helps immigrants and refugees with a number of issues, including personal counseling, resettlement, citizenship and reunification, and provides interpreters and translators, according to a United Way of Broome County Web site, which is affiliated with the association.
More in NEWS
Local (and not-so-local) news from your favorite writers.
Any news on whether the gunman was someone who was there for services (i.e. an immigrant) or some crazy American minute man who just wanted to kill some immigrants?
Looks like someone’s got their own “Become the person I was on 9/12” plan going.
My bet is that he’s a big fan of Lou Dobbs.
Initial rumors (via relatives in the region watching on local news) say the gunman is (was?) Asian.
That’s unfortunate.
This is what happens when you live in the big city.
This would never happen in a small town or in an agrarian exurban culture.
“This would never happen in a small town or in an agrarian exurban culture.”
Not too many immigrant help centers in the sticks. Schoolhouses full of children to be buttfucked and then shot? That’s the Real America!
@ 4 – that’s what the Guardian story, citing a local reporter citing a cop, says as well.
@6. Big city? You’ve obviously never been to Binghamton.
Um, Binghampton IS a small town in an agrarian exurban culture. I assume you knew that, right?
God, I hope the reports of 12 dead are wrong.
tightly restricted access to mental health care + lightly regualted access to firearms = what makes america great!
Sad. some say it’s as high as fifteen.
I hope they get the monsters who has done this fast before he gets others.
Sounds like textbook terrorism to me. But I’m not holding my breath for the media to go there.
Remember, it’s only terrorism if brown folks do it.
How terrible.
@6 fuck you. google binghampton.
“The population of the City, according to the 2000 census, is 47,380.”
Not very big.
@3 for the best of the losses. Cause nobody wins when stuff like this happens, ever.
I beat the “cities are dying” guy at his own game! I WIN!
12 dead + Gunman.
Ouch 🙁
“We surround them.”
“Nobody needed to be told what to do. They just did it.”
“I’ll show you what I’ve been working on, and you show me what you’ve been working on.”
What do these phrases mean to different people?
oh man, this is the reason i hate being from New York State….everyone fucking assumes that you and everything happening in the state occurs in downtown Manhattan. This happens in no other state/city in the united states…gah…stereotypes
As far as the press is concerned, there seem to have been an unusual number of mass shootings in this country lately. Can’t be totally surprised given the current economic climate, but still, damn.
Condolences to all.
Let’s not hear anything about gun control. That’s for librul pansies!
Binghamton is neither a big nor a small city. Yes, the city itself is ~50k. But the area is 250k, SUNY Binghamton University is a serious school, and when I lived in Elmira, we called it a big city.
But really, who cares? This would be terrible in Seattle and it would be terrible in Ellensburg.
@20 It’s because you’ve got your main city named the same as the state… and no one ever calls “New York City” New York City. They call it New York. If the capital of California was “California City” you’d get the same thing happening.
wench@24, no there’s a weird thing where people assume not just that 99% of the state’s population is in NYC, but that you personally have an encyclopedic knowledge of the city:
Me: I’m from upstate New York, originally. Elmira. The Chemung Valley is so beautiful. It—
Mouthbreather: oh yeah! I was in New York once! I stayed at that one hotel. You know! The one where those two big streets come together.
Me: Sure. Stayed there once myself.
@24 has a point about the city/state confusion – when I lived in New York (state – Buffalo, the asshole of my life) and told people I was from Washington, they ALWAYS thought I meant D.C. So I started saying I was from Seattle, even though I’m from the sticks of eastern WA. It’s easier, because everyone thinks all of WA is Seattle, just like everyone thinks all of New York is the city. And now, back in WA, when I say I lived in New York, I have to clarify. Ridiculous.
Not that any of this matters at all, in light of this story.
Beck needs to watch “The Fisher King” and pay careful attention to the plight of the Jeff Bridges character.
Binghamton is a terrible place, “old Testament smited,” as a friend says. It used to be the corporate dream: IBM, Endicott Johnson shoes, Kodak had a big factory there, and it had a booming local economy. Now it looks like Belfast; half the stores downtown are boarded up, 95% of the kids in the public school system are on the federal breakfast program, the old Kodak factory is a Superfund site. Every spring it floods with polluted waters. It’s the true end point of late capitalism. The white people there are ferociously, crazily racist, and blame all the immigrants who came up from New York City “to live off welfare” for the city’s downturn. It is a sad, smited place indeed.
Oh, and technically a small city since Vestal, Johnson City and Binghamton are basically one continuum of awfulness of over 80,000. Elmira is nice, though, I agree, as well as Oneonta, Corning, Ithaca and Owego.