“According to authorities, the gunman fired more than 60 shots while walking along the road before being shot himself and collapsing to the ground wounded. The two motorists who were hit suffered life-threatening injuries and were hospitalized,” the AP reported.
According to her, the attack took place on a busy road along the Charles River in Cambridge, where Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have their campuses. According to the American media, the sidewalks and paths along the river are full of pedestrians, runners and cyclists in this area.
The suspect, 46-year-old Tyler Brown of Boston, was only released from a psychiatric hospital on Friday, where he was treated for post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression. About an hour before the shooting, he contacted his probation officer via video call. The man with the gun said during the call that he has fallen back into his problems and wants to end his life. The probation officer then contacted the police, who began looking for Brown and tracked him down in Cambridge using phone data.
Armando Zona, who has an apartment near the scene of the incident, testified that he saw the shooter shooting at cars from the balcony. “He looked in our direction, I’m pretty sure, and I ran,” he said. While he was yelling at his wife to hide in the bathroom, he heard another shot. “I turned around and saw a broken window. I couldn’t understand it. How could something like this happen? A bullet just flew into my apartment,” he added.
“While people were jumping out of cars and running in all directions… the police officer and one civilian instead of running away went towards the shooter with weapons in hand to resolve the situation,” Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan commented on the incident.
