LONDON - A taxi driver went on a shooting spree across rural northwestern England on Wednesday, killing 12 people and wounding 25 others before shooting himself, police said. Officers found a body believed to be that of suspect Derrick Bird, 52, in woodland near the Lake District village of Boot, Cumbria police said. A gun was found alongside the body.
The rampage in the county of Cumbria is the deadliest mass shooting since 1996 in a country where gun ownership is tightly restricted.
Police Deputy Chief Constable Stuart Hyde says the rampage "has shocked the people of Cumbria and around the country to the core."
Police said the shootings occurred in the small town of Whitehaven and nearby Seascale and Egremont, about 350 miles northwest of London.
The BBC reported there had been shootings in 11 locations and that victims were apparently chosen randomly. Witnesses described seeing the gunman driving around shooting out the window of his car.
Barrie Walker, a doctor in Seascale who certified one of the deaths, told the BBC that victims had been shot in the face, apparently with a shotgun.
Witness Alan Hannah told the Whitehaven News that he saw a man with a shotgun in a car near a taxi stand in Whitehaven. Photos showed a body, covered in a sheet, lying in a street in the town.
The BBC reported that detectives said Bird drove to the central Lake District in a Citroen Picasso and abandoned it in the Boot area. Deputy Chief Constable Stuart Hyde said a body thought to be Bird's was then found in a wooded area, the BBC reported.
Local lawmaker Jamie Reed said people in the area — popular with hikers and vacationers — were in shock.
"This kind of thing doesn't happen in our part of the world," he told the BBC. "We have got one of the lowest, if not the lowest, crime rates in the country."
Handguns banned in Britain Multiple shootings are rare in Britain, where gun ownership is tightly restricted and handguns are banned.
In 1987, gun enthusiast Michael Ryan killed 16 people in the English town of Hungerford. In 1996, Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and a teacher at a kindergarten in Dunblane, Scotland.
Glenda Pears, who runs L&G Taxis in Whitehaven. said one of the victims was another taxi driver who was a friend of Bird's.
"They used to stand together having a (laugh) on the rank," she said. "He was friends with everybody and used to stand and joke on Duke Street."
Sue Matthews, who works at A2B Taxis in Whitehaven, said Bird was self-employed, quiet and lived alone.
"I would say he was fairly popular. I would see him once a week out and about. He was known as 'Birdy,'" she said.
"I can't believe he would do that — he was a quiet little fellow."