FORT SMITH, Ark. (AP) — An Arkansas man who authorities say fatally shot an 87-year-old neighbor was trying to lure residents of his apartment complex outside before someone shot and killed him, according to witnesses.
“He was yelling and screaming: ‘You guys get out here, come out here, everyone get out of this building right now,’” Janey Peugh, who lives at the complex, told KFSM television station.
Police in Fort Smith, Arkansas, located on the border with Oklahoma, say that after Zachary Arnold, 26, fatally shot Lois Hicks on Saturday morning, he continued to shoot at neighboring apartments with a semi-automatic rifle. Another resident, who has not been named, retrieved a hunting rifle and shot and killed Arnold, police said.
Resident Amber Lane told the television station that Hicks and Arnold lived in the same building. She said Hicks and another neighbor had gone outside before running back into their apartments.
“There were two older women, both had come out,” Lane said. “One of them had ran back in, and the other one ran back in, but she didn’t close her door, then he walked in and did what he did.”
Police said that Hicks was shot multiple times inside her apartment.
Lane said she was grateful for the neighbor who shot Arnold.
“If he didn’t do that, who knows how much worse it could have gotten,” Lane said.
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