The Daily Blog

Grand Rapids Shooting: Suspect In Michigan Rampage Commits Suicide.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A gunman opened fire in two Michigan homes Thursday, killing seven people before leading police on a high-speed chase through downtown Grand Rapids and taking three hostages. The standoff ended when he killed himself with a gunshot to the head, authorities said.

The hostages were released unharmed.

Authorities did not have a motive for the suspect, 34-year-old Rodrick Shonte Dantzler, or disclose his exact relationship with those he killed.

The manhunt for Dantzler began after four people were found dead in one home and three were discovered in another across town. Two of the dead were children.

“We believe there were prior relationships with at least one person at each location, so we think there were some difficulties there,” Police Chief Kevin Belk said.

Following the discovery of the bodies, Dantzler led officers on a chase, crashed his car and then took the hostages, police said.

Dozens of officers with guns drawn cordoned off a neighborhood near a small lake in the northern part of the city and shut down nearby Interstate 96.

Records show Dantzler was released from state prison in 2005 after serving time for assault less than murder. A spokesman for the prison system said he had not been under state supervision since then.

At one point during the chase, the suspect crossed a wide grassy median on the interstate and drove the wrong way down the highway while more than a dozen squad cars pursued him. Belk said he crashed the vehicle while driving down an embankment into a wooded area of the highway, which remained closed hours later.

Two other people were shot when the suspect fired at police during the chase, but their wounds were not considered life-threatening. One man was wounded in what Belk described as a “road rage” attack after the suspect fired through the rear window of the vehicle. A woman was hit in the arm in a separate shooting.

The names of the dead were not immediately released. Autopsies were scheduled for Friday.

Carrie Colacchio lives a little more than a mile away from the hostage situation and said she was driving in the area when the suspect’s vehicle blew through.

“I looked in my rearview mirror and see this big white SUV coming up behind me,” she said. “The only way to get out of it was to push the gas pedal.”

She couldn’t turn off the road or slow down or go any other way and reached about 85 mph.

“I almost got smacked,” she said. “I had to go up on the curb.”

Sandra Powney lives across the street from one of the homes where the shootings happened and said she had seen Dantzler at the ranch house, where a couple has lived for more than 20 years with two adult daughters.

Powney said she had been at home all day and did not realize anyone had been killed until police arrived at the cul-de-sac in the midafternoon.

“For a while we couldn’t come outside,” she said. “They didn’t know if there was someone still inside the house.”

Neighbors said police congregated at Dantzler’s home a few miles away after the shootings.

Sonia Bergers said Dantzler lived with a woman she assumed was his wife and their daughter, a girl who appeared to be about 10 years old.

Mary Lahuis and her husband had just returned home after having coffee at a nearby fast-food restaurant when police began running down their street with guns, yelling at people to get in their homes.

Of Dantzler she said: “You would see him going up and down the street. And you’d hear him going up and down the street.”

Lisa Schenden lives with her husband and their children two blocks from the home where four people were killed. She said the homeowners are a couple whose daughter has a daughter with the suspect.

Schenden said she did not hear the shooting either, but she saw the suspect and his daughter drive up to the house earlier in the day.

“Just last night, my kids went over there swimming, and I went over with them,” she said.

Outside the two-story, wood-sided home where the three people were killed, neighbors stood in clumps Thursday evening, quietly talking as investigators scoured the house. As officers left, people disappeared indoors and a single police car remained on the block.

The only indication of anything unusual was three bouquets of flowers on the porch steps.

At least 6 missing after boat capsizes off Mexico.

MEXICO CITY — At least six people were missing after a tourist fishing boat capsized and sank in the Sea of Cortez off Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, a U.S. Coast Guard spokeswoman reported Monday.

The Erik, a 100-foot (32-meter) fishing tourist boat, had 44 people aboard, including 27 Americans, when it capsized around 2:30 a.m. Sunday, Coast Guard Petty Officer Pamela Boehland said from Alameda, Calif.

The boat, which had left from San Felipe carrying 17 crew and 27 fishermen, capsized about 62 miles (100 kilometers) south of San Felipe, Baja California Civil Protection Director Alfredo Escobedo Ortiz told The Associated Press.

Boehland said the Mexican Navy told the U.S. that one person had died, but Escobedo said there were no confirmed deaths yet and 11 people were missing. It was not immediately possible to resolve the conflicting reports.

Boehland said 37 survivors were rescued, including all the Americans.

It took a while for authorities to hear about the tragedy because the boat capsized in a remote area and some survivors had to swim to shore and hike for a while before they could get help, she said.

The U.S. Coast Guard was assisting the Mexican navy early Monday in the search for the missing. Mexican navy helicopters were scouring the area, and the U.S. planned to send a helicopter early Monday.

Milton Mathis, Convicted Killer, Executed In Texas Despite Evidence Of Retardation.

A man convicted of slaying two people and critically injuring a third in a drug house shooting was executed on Tuesday evening by Texas officials, despite evidence that he suffered from mental retardation.

Milton Mathis, 32, was sentenced to death in 1999, three years before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that execution of the mentally retarded violated the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

Intelligence tests, including one given by the Texas Department of Corrections in 2000, measured Mathis’s IQ in the low 60s, well below the threshold for mild mental retardation as recognized by almost all states.

In 2005, however, a Texas court rejected his claims of mental impairment, siding with prosecutors who characterized Mathis as a “street smart” criminal whose behavior indicated near-normal intelligence. Federal and state courts declined to overturn the verdict, clearing the way for his execution by lethal injection at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Hunstville. A last-ditch petition by Mathis’s attorneys requesting a stay of execution and a review of his case was rejected without comment by the Supreme Court late Tuesday afternoon.

Mathis was pronounced dead at 6:53 p.m.

“The system has failed me,” he said in a final statement, according to prison officials.

A spokeswoman for Texas Governor Rick Perry, a Republican who is weighing a run for the presidency, said the governor could not offer clemency or a reprieve in the case without a positive recommendation from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, which voted on Monday to reject a

In 2001, Gov. Perry vetoed a bill passed by the Texas legislature banning the execution of the mentally retarded, saying that the state’s judicial system already contained adequate protections for such defendants. Supporters of the bill disagreed, pointing to evidence indicating that at least a half-dozen prisoners with mental deficiencies had been executed since 1990.

Since taking office in December 2000, Gov. Perry has overseen more than 230 executions, more than any other U.S governor in modern history. Mathis was the 6th inmate put to death in Texas this year, and the 23rd in the nation.

In an editorial last week in the Dallas Morning News, former Texas governor Mark White (D) called on Perry to authorize a temporary reprieve for Mathis to examine his claims of mental retardation.

“Mathis has suffered from obvious mental disabilities since childhood,” wrote White. “He failed the first, fifth and eight grades and dropped out of high school in ninth grade.”

“The governor of Texas is authorized by law to take action to prevent precisely this sort of injustice,” he wrote.

Fred Felcman, an assistant district attorney for Fort Bend County who led the prosecution of Mathis, disputed White’s claims, saying Mathis’s mental deficits were not severe enough to disqualify him from the death penalty.

“We don’t execute people who are mentally retarded,” Felcman said. “The guy is street smart.”

Felcman attended the execution in Huntsville at the request of Melanie Almaguer, he said, who was paralyzed from the chest down at age 15 after being shot in the face by Mathis.

Steven Rocket Rosen, who defended Mathis in his original trial, said there was “no excuse” for the actions of his client. But he said Mathis’s mental problems were severe and had been aggravated by heavy drug use from a young age.

According to court records, Mathis began smoking PCP and marijuana soaked in formaldehyde, known as “fry,” as early as age 12.

“The guy is off, way off,” Rosen said. “He’s retarded. They should have offered life in this case and got on with it.” reprieve for Mr. Mathis. Members of the board are appointed by the governor.

New York Shooting: Four Dead In Pharmacy Massacre.

MEDFORD, N.Y. — A gunman shot four people inside a pharmacy in a New York suburb Sunday morning, killing everyone inside the store in what police said looked like a robbery gone wrong.

The massacre happened at about 10:20 a.m. inside a family-owned pharmacy in a small cluster of medical offices in Medford, a middle-class hamlet on Long Island about 60 miles east of New York City.

Police rushed to the scene after getting a 911 call from someone in the pharmacy’s parking lot. When they arrived, they found two employees and two customers dead, said Suffolk County Police Department’s Chief of Detectives Dominick Varrone. No one inside the shop survived.

Suffolk County Police identified the dead employees as Raymond Ferguson, 45, of Centereach, and Jennifer Mejia, 17, of East Patchogue. Bryon Sheffield, 71, of Medford, and Jamie Taccetta, a 33-year-old woman from Farmingville, were identified as the two customers.

Rene Mejia, of Medford, said one of the victims was his daughter, Jennifer. He said she worked part-time at the pharmacy while attending Bellport High School, where she was finishing her senior year.

“I don’t know what happened,” he said. “She was supposed to graduate Thursday.”

The pharmacy, Haven Drugs, had opened for business at 10 a.m., and Varrone said investigators’ initial belief was that a single gunman was responsible for the bloodbath, and that the motive was robbery. Just how the shooting unfolded, and why, were unclear, he said.

Police said the suspect was armed with a handgun and stole prescription drugs from the pharmacy before fleeing with a black backpack. No suspects were in custody.

A call left for the man listed in state records as the pharmacy’s owner and chief pharmacist, Vinoda Kudchadkar, wasn’t immediately returned.

Police had the streets around the pharmacy blocked off with crime tape. Officers could be seen scanning the ground for evidence, and as of late afternoon the bodies had yet to be removed.

Two teens, who said they were classmates of Mejia, came to the scene after hearing about the shooting from friends on Facebook.

“She was a walking angel on earth,” said Kimberly Jimenez, 18, of Brookhaven.

“She gave me a bracelet and said God would watch out for me, Jimenez said. “Why couldn’t God watch out for her.”

Another classmate, Taylor Lee, 17, of East Patchogue, described Mejia as a “very holy girl.”

“She was truly one of God’s angels,” Lee said.

News of the shootings stunned neighbors, who said they heard the commotion after police arrived, but saw nothing of the crime.

“It’s absolutely crazy. There are no words,” said Scott Radice, who lives four houses up the street from Haven Drugs and said he has been a customer for 15 years. “I’m hoping they had cameras in the pharmacy so they can catch this guy.”

“This is a family business. Everyone goes there. It is our neighborhood pharmacy,” said neighbor Kathy Culhane. “If you had a problem with prescriptions, he’d go to bat for you,” she said of the owner, who wasn’t at the pharmacy when the shooting happened.

U.N. Gay Rights Protection Resolution Passes, Hailed As ‘Historic Moment’.

GENEVA — The United Nations endorsed the rights of gay, lesbian and transgender people for the first time ever Friday, passing a resolution hailed as historic by the U.S. and other backers and decried by some African and Muslim countries.

The declaration was cautiously worded, expressing “grave concern” about abuses because of sexual orientation and commissioning a global report on discrimination against gays.

But activists called it an important shift on an issue that has divided the global body for decades, and they credited the Obama administration’s push for gay rights at home and abroad.

“This represents a historic moment to highlight the human rights abuses and violations that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people face around the world based solely on who they are and whom they love,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement.

Following tense negotiations, members of the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council narrowly voted in favor of the declaration put forward by South Africa, with 23 votes in favor and 19 against.

Backers included the U.S., the European Union, Brazil and other Latin American countries. Those against included Russia, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Pakistan. China, Burkina Faso and Zambia abstained, Kyrgyzstan didn’t vote and Libya was suspended from the rights body earlier.

The resolution expressed “grave concern at acts of violence and discrimination, in all regions of the world, committed against individuals because of their sexual orientation and gender identity.”

More important, activists said, it also established a formal U.N. process to document human rights abuses against gays, including discriminatory laws and acts of violence. According to Amnesty International, consensual same-sex relations are illegal in 76 countries worldwide, while harassment and discrimination are common in many more.

“Today’s resolution breaks the silence that has been maintained for far too long,” said John Fisher of the gay rights advocacy group ARC International.

The resolution calls for a panel discussion next spring with “constructive, informed and transparent dialogue on the issue of discriminatory laws and practices and acts of violence against” gays, lesbians and transgender people.

The prospect of having their laws scrutinized in this way went too far for many of the council’s 47-member states.

“We are seriously concerned at the attempt to introduce to the United Nations some notions that have no legal foundation,” said Zamir Akram, Pakistan’s envoy to the U.N. in Geneva, speaking on behalf of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Nigeria claimed the proposal went against the wishes of most Africans. A diplomat from the northwest African state of Mauritania called the resolution “an attempt to replace the natural rights of a human being with an unnatural right.”

Boris Dittrich of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights program at Human Rights Watch said it was important for the U.S. and Western Europe to persuade South Africa to take the lead on the resolution so that other non-Western countries would be less able to claim the West was imposing its values.

At the same time, he noted that the U.N. has no enforcement mechanism to back up the resolution. “It’s up to civil society to name and shame those governments that continue abuses,” Dittrich said.

The Obama administration has been pushing for gay rights both domestically and internationally.

In March, the U.S. issued a nonbinding declaration in favor of gay rights that gained the support of more than 80 countries at the U.N. In addition, Congress recently repealed the ban on gays openly serving in the military, and the Obama administration said it would no longer defend the constitutionality of the U.S. law that bars federal recognition of same-sex marriage.

The vote in Geneva came at a momentous time for the gay rights debate in the U.S. Activists across the political spectrum were on edge Friday as New York legislators considered a bill that would make the state the sixth – and by far the biggest – to allow same-sex marriage.

Asked what good the U.N. resolution would do for gays and lesbians in countries that opposed the resolution, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary Daniel Baer said it was a signal “that there are many people in the international community who stand with them and who support them, and that change will come.”

“It’s a historic method of tyranny to make you feel that you are alone,” he said. “One of the things that this resolution does for people everywhere, particularly LGBT people everywhere, is remind them that they are not alone.”

Explosions In Pakistan Kill At Least 34 As CIA Director Leon Panetta Visits Islamabad.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Two explosions went off minutes apart in the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar Sunday, killing 34 people and injuring nearly 100 in one of the deadliest attacks since the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden last month, officials said.

The blasts, one of which was caused by a suicide bomber, occurred just after midnight in an area of the city that is home to political offices and army housing.

The attack took place as CIA Director Leon Panetta and Afghan President Hamid Karzai visited Islamabad, 95 miles (150 kilometers) to the east, to speak separately with senior Pakistani officials about intelligence sharing and efforts to reconcile with the Taliban.

The first explosion was relatively small and drew police and rescue workers to the site, said Dost Mohammed, a senior local police official. A large explosion rocked the area a few minutes later, causing the fatalities and injuring 98 people, 18 critically, said Rahim Jan, a senior doctor at a local hospital.

The second blast was caused by a suicide bomber riding a motorcycle packed with 22 pounds (10 kilograms) of explosives, said Ejaz Khan, a senior police official. The source of the first explosion was unknown.

No group claimed responsibility, but the Pakistani Taliban have pledged to carry out attacks in retaliation for the covert U.S. Navy SEAL raid that killed bin Laden in an army town outside Islamabad on May 2.

Saturday’s attack took place across the street from the offices of the top political agent to Khyber, part of Pakistan’s volatile tribal region, and only about 100 yards from army housing units. Peshawar borders the tribal region and has been repeatedly hit by bombings over the past few years.

The dead included at least one journalist, said Mohammed Farooq, a hospital doctor. Another four journalists and at least 10 police were injured, he said. Many of the people killed were so badly burned they were difficult to identify.

Jamal Khan, a 22-year-old student, was in his apartment when the first blast went off. He rushed to the scene as the second explosion occurred, peppering his face and arms with flying debris.

“The explosion was so huge I will never forget it all my life,” said Khan as he recovered in a hospital. “It was deafening, and then there was a cloud of dust and smoke. When the dust settled, I saw people crying for help and body parts scattered everywhere.”

The attack followed a second day of meetings between Panetta, the CIA chief, and senior Pakistani officials. The talks were slated to focus on the size and scope of U.S. intelligence activities in the wake of the raid that killed bin Laden, said a Pakistani official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The bin Laden operation plunged an already strained relationship between the CIA and Pakistan’s main intelligence agency, the ISI, to new lows and threatened cooperation that is key to the U.S. fight against al-Qaida and Taliban militants battling foreign troops in Afghanistan.

The U.S. also needs Pakistan’s help to promote and guide negotiations with the Taliban that can help end the decade-long Afghan war. Pakistan and Afghanistan inaugurated a joint peace commission Saturday during a visit by Karzai, the Afghan president.

In an attempt to rebuild their relationship, Washington and Islamabad have agreed to form a joint intelligence team to track down militant targets inside Pakistan, drawing in part from the trove of records taken from bin Laden’s personal office during the raid.

Panetta and Pakistani officials planned to discuss what U.S. intelligence officers will be permitted to do, and how many will be allowed into the country as part of the team, said the Pakistani official.

But new suspicions have marred this attempt at renewed cooperation.

As an act of faith to restore relations with the Pakistanis, U.S. intelligence shared the suspected location of explosive material held by the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani network at two compounds in the Pakistani tribal areas, according to a Pakistani and a U.S. official.

The U.S. official said that after the intelligence was shared, the explosive material was moved. The Pakistani official told The Associated Press that they checked out the locations, but nothing was there, and that they intend to investigate to dispel U.S. suspicions that the Pakistani intelligence service had tipped off the militants.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence operations.

Panetta’s visit is his first to Pakistan since the bin Laden raid. His ties with Pakistan will be key in his new role as U.S. defense secretary, presuming he is speedily confirmed by Congress.

The U.S. wants the proposed joint intelligence team under discussion Saturday to pursue a list of five high-value targets it handed to the Pakistani leadership recently. The target list included al-Qaida’s military operations chief in Pakistan, Ilyas Kashmiri, who was reportedly killed by a drone strike in the Pakistani tribal areas June 3.

Karzai pressed Pakistan for support in facilitating negotiations with Taliban militants with whom the Pakistani government has historical ties.

There is a significant level of distrust between the two countries, but Pakistan promised to help as Afghanistan sees fit.

“We both want stability in Afghanistan and in Pakistan,” said Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in a news conference held with Karzai after the first meeting of the joint peace commission. “Our only aim is to support the peace process, which is Afghan-led.”

Violent Thunderstorms Kill At Least 7 In Oklahoma, Kansas.

EL RENO, Okla. — Violent storms that swept through a chunk of the central U.S. killed at least nine people in three states, toppling trees, crushing cars and tearing through a rural Arkansas fire station.

The high-powered storms arrived as forecast Tuesday night and early Wednesday, just days after a massive tornado tore through the southwest Missouri town of Joplin and killed 122 people. After killing two people in Kansas and five in Oklahoma, they continued their trek east into Arkansas before petering out.

At least two people died as the storms ripped through Arkansas’ Franklin and Johnson counties, the state’s Department of Emergency Management spokesman Tommy Jackson said. One person died after a tornado ripped the tiny western Arkansas community of Denning shortly after midnight Wednesday. Another person died in an area called Bethlehem, in Johnson County.

Emergency officials had accounted for everyone else in Bethlehem, said county emergency management director Josh Johnston. Crews were working through the night in the hopes of saying the same thing for other communities.

Just outside Denning, winery owner Eugene Post listened to the tornado from his porch. He saw the lights flicker, as the storms yanked power from the community.

“I didn’t see anything,” Post, 83, said early Wednesday. “I could hear it real loud though. … It sounded like a train – or two or three – going by.”

A number of people were injured in both Franklin and Johnson counties, though officials weren’t sure exactly how many. A rural fire station in Franklin County was left without a roof as emergency workers rushed to the wounded. Downed trees and power lines tossed across roadways also slowed search-and-rescue crews’ efforts.

Hours earlier, several tornadoes struck Oklahoma City and its suburbs during the Tuesday night rush hour, killing at least five people and injuring at least 60 others, including three children who were in critical condition, authorities said.

Some residents said they had been warned about the impending weather for days and were watching television or listening to the radio so they would know when to take cover.

“We live in Oklahoma and we don’t mess around,” Lori Jenkins said. “We kept an eye on the weather and knew it was getting close.”

She took refuge with her husband and two children in a neighbor’s storm shelter in the Oklahoma City suburb of Guthrie. When they emerged, they discovered their carport had been destroyed and the back of their home was damaged.

Chris Pyle was stunned as he pulled into the suburban neighborhood near Piedmont where he lived as a teenager. His parents’ home was destroyed, but the house next door had only a few damaged shingles.

“That’s when it started sinking in,” he said. “You don’t know what to think. There are lots of memories, going through the trash tonight, finding old trophies and pictures.”

His parents, Fred and Snow Pyle, rode out the storm in a shelter at a nearby school.

Cherokee Ballard, a spokeswoman for the state medical examiner, said four people died west of Oklahoma City in Canadian County, where a weather-monitoring site in El Reno recorded 151 mph winds.

At Chickasha, 25 miles southwest of Oklahoma City, a 26-year-old woman died when a tornado hit a mobile home park where residents had been asked to evacuate their trailers, Assistant Police Chief Elip Moore said. He said a dozen people were injured and that hundreds were displaced when the storm splintered their homes.

In Kansas, police said two people died when high winds threw a tree into their van around 6 p.m. near the small town of St. John, about 100 miles west of Wichita. The highway was shut down because of storm damage.

The path of the storms included Joplin, which is cleaning up from a Sunday storm that was the nation’s eighth-deadliest twister among records dating to 1840. Late-night tornado sirens had Joplin’s residents ducking for cover again before the storm brushed past without serious problems.

The storms also blew through North Texas, but the damage seemed to be confined to roofs and trees and lawn furniture and play equipment.

“The hail was probably more destructive,” said Steve Fano, National Weather Service meteorologist in Fort Worth.

Guatemala Killings: Massacre In Caserio La Bomba Leaves 29 Dead, Many Beheaded.

GUATEMALA CITY — Assailants killed at least 29 people – decapitating most of the victims – on a ranch in a part of northern Guatemala plagued by drug cartels, national police said Sunday.

The massacre took place early Sunday in the town of Caserio La Bomba in Peten province near the Mexico border, according to National Civil Police spokesman Donald Gonzalez. Among the 29 dead were two children and two women.

It is one of the worst massacres since the end of Guatemala’s 36-year civil war in 1996.

Gonzalez said police are investigating whether the attack is related to Saturday’s killing in Peten of Haroldo Leon, the brother of alleged Guatemalan drug boss Juan Jose “Juancho” Leon.

“Juancho” Leon was killed in 2008 in an ambush that Guatemalan authorities blame on Mexico’s Zetas drug cartel, which has increasingly wrested control of the drug trade outside Mexico, at times by eliminating their competition.

Guatemalan police said the victims of Sunday’s massacre were bound and their bodies showed signs of torture. They were believed to have worked on the farm. Police found a message written in blood at the scene saying: “Salguero, we’re coming for you.” Police did not say who Salguero was.

Authorities said soldiers were searching the area for the unidentified assailants and didn’t offer a motive for the attack.

“This is a terrible event that we must clarify and investigate regardless of the consequences, whoever is the author of this massacre,” said Guatemala Prosecutor General Claudia Paz y Paz.

Late Sunday, authorities said they had found a wounded survivor of the massacre, who stayed alive by pretending to be dead. But officials did not release any details of what the survivor said.

Guatemala is a major transshipment point for drugs, the U.S. State Department said in its latest narcotics report. Its weak law enforcement, rampant corruption and proximity to Mexico have drawn Mexican drug cartels into its border regions.

In February, the government lifted a two-month-long state of siege that it had declared in Alta Verapaz province, which neighbors Peten province, during which security forces were sent to quell drug-related violence.

The state of siege gave the army emergency powers – including permission to detain suspects without warrants – and resulted in the arrest of at least 20 suspected members of the Zetas.

The Zetas are a group of ex-soldiers who began as hit men for Mexico’s Gulf drug cartel before breaking off on their own, quickly becoming one of Mexico’s most violent organized crime groups and spreading a reign of terror into Central America. They are notorious for their brutality, including beheading rivals and officials. Authorities have linked them to a series of massacres and mass graves in northern Mexico.

The Zetas began controlling cocaine trafficking in the Alta Verapaz region in 2008 after killing “Juancho” Leon.

6 Dead in Early Easter Fire in Washington.

VANCOUVER, Wash. - A fire that awakened neighbors with a blast as it tore through a Vancouver, Wash., home early Sunday has killed six people, officials and area residents said.

After the flames were brought under control around 2 a.m., firefighters initially said two people died in the blaze. But authorities said at nightfall, after a day of picking through the charred debris, that four more bodies had been found.

Investigators haven’t determined the cause of the deaths or the identities of the victims, Vancouver police department spokewoman Kim Kapp said.

She told The Associated Press that investigators are still trying to find out how the blaze erupted. While it hasn’t been labeled it as suspicious, they haven’t yet ruled out arson.

“The arson team hasn’t made a determination,” she said. “On an investigation like this, with multiple deaths, we utilize many investigative angles.”

Kapp said that the police department’s major crimes as well as the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were also investigating.

The Clark County medical examiner’s office is expected to perform autopsies Monday.

Neighbors in the Countyside Woods neighborhood told The Columbian of Vancouver that they were wakened by an explosion.

“I ran out barefoot,” said Kathy Larsen, who lives next door. “The flames were just intense and people were yelling that it could blow again. We were all yelling and trying to get the occupants awake.”Neighbor Jon Himes, who lives two houses away, told The Columbian his surveillance camera recorded a man going into the residence at 12:38 a.m.

“The blast happened exactly one hour later,” he said.

A man, his wife and three children had vacated the house about six weeks earlier, Larsen said. The man had come back several times, she said.

Vancouver Fire Capt. Chris Moen said 20 firefighters with 11 rigs fought the fire.

The blaze was under control at 2:06 a.m. Moen said the house has extensive damage. The fire apparently broke out in the back bedroom on the east side.

“This (fire) has left a mark on everybody who is working on it,” he told The Columbian.