Maine news, sports, weather from Waterville Morning Sentinel

October 22, 2012

Wis. gunman in salon attack had history of abuse

Dinesh Ramde / The Associated Press

BROOKFIELD, Wis. —  A man suspected of opening fire at a Wisconsin salon where his wife worked, killing three women and wounding four others, had a history of domestic abuse and had been arrested for slashing his wife's tires a few weeks earlier, police said.

It wasn't clear if Radcliffe Franklin Haughton's wife was among the victims in Sunday's shooting at the spa in Brookfield, a middle-to-upper class suburb west of Milwaukee. Haughton, 45, shot himself to death at the salon, police said.

Haughton's wife sought court protection four days after he slashed her tires on Oct. 4, Brookfield police said. Police arrested him and a judge granted a four-year restraining order on Thursday. As part of the order, Haughton, of Brown Deer, was prohibited from owning a firearm.

Brookfield Police Chief Dan Tushaus declined to comment on whether Haughton had surrendered any weapons prior to Sunday's salon rampage. Tushaus also said he wasn't aware of a motive, but that investigators weren't looking for anyone else in the shooting.

"I can tell you we're not seeking additional suspects," he said at a news conference Sunday evening. "The community can feel safe."

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent Tom Ahern said Monday that a .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun was used in the attack.

A spokeswoman at the Froedtert Hospital where the injured were taken said one of the four women remained in critical condition early Monday. Kathy Sieja said the three other women were in satisfactory condition.

The shootings set off a confusing, six-hour search for the gunman, forcing the lockdown of a nearby mall, a country club adjacent to the spa and the hospital where the survivors were taken. The search froze activity in a commercial area of Brookfield for much of the day.

Authorities said it would take time to sort out exactly what happened, and emphasized they were still interviewing witnesses and rescuers and didn't have a firm timeline of events. Brookfield Mayor Steve Ponto called the shootings "a senseless act on the part of one person."

The chaos started around 11 a.m. at the Azana Day Spa, a two-story, 9,000-square-foot building across from a major shopping mall. The first officers on the scene found the building filled with smoke from a fire authorities believe Haughton set, Tushaus said.

They also found a 1-pound propane tank they initially thought might be an improvised explosive device, Tushaus said. That slowed the search of the building as law enforcement agents waited for a bomb squad to clear the scene.

Tushaus said later that police didn't know whether the gunman brought the propane tank to the spa or whether a contractor left it.

The search was also complicated by the layout of the building, with numerous small treatment rooms and several locked areas, Tushaus said. While officers initially thought the gunman had fled the building, they later found his body in one of the locked areas, he said.

The bodies of the victims were also found in the spa. Tushaus said investigators were still working to identify them. He said the four survivors were between the ages of 22 and 40. He didn't know if they were employees at the spa or customers, and it wasn't clear if the man's wife was among the victims.

Haughton's father, Radcliffe Haughton, Sr., spoke to The Associated Press shortly before police announced that they had found his son's body. In telephone interviews from Florida, he said he had last spoken to his son a few days ago, but didn't know anything was wrong. He begged his son to turn himself in.

After learning of his son's death, he said only: "This is very sad."

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