On February 7, 2008, a gunman went on a shooting rampage at a public meeting in the city hall, leaving six people dead and one injured in Kirkwood, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton, aged 52, shot one police officer with a revolver across the side street from city hall and took the officer's handgun before entering city hall. Thornton reached council chambers with these two pistols shortly after the meeting began. There, he shot a police officer, the public works director, two council members, the mayor, and a reporter. In total, the gunman killed five and wounded two others; one of the two wounded victims, the mayor died seven months later in a hospice where he was receiving cancer care. The shooter died from two gunshot wounds in a shootout with police.
