Vigils/Memorial Services

St. Peter Church in Kirkwood (243 West Argonne) will celebrate a Healing Mass at 5:30PM Friday.

12:27

Kirkwood (KMOV) -- News 4 has learned that Charles "Cookie" Thornton did not expect to survive Thursday night's deadly shooting spree at the Kirkwood City Hall.

Gerald Thornton, says his brother left a suicide note that said in part, "in the end the truth will win out."

Police are releasing more details about the circumstances of Thursday night's deadly attack at the Kirkwood City Hall that left six people, including the gunman dead.

Authorities believe Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton parked his vehicle right outside city hall. He then walked across the parking lot where he approached Sergeant Bill Biggs.

Authorities don’t know what took place between the two of them. Police say Thornton shot and killed Sergeant Biggs with a high powered revolver. Investigators say Thornton took Sgt. Bigg's service weapon and walked into city hall.

Authorities said Thornton went into the council chambers where he shot Officer Tom Ballman and he proceeded to shoot the rest of the individuals in there, shooting a total of five people.

Authorities said other Kirkwood officers came in, exchanged shots with Thornton before the gunman was shot and killed.

When it was over city council member Connie Karr and Mike Lynch, public works director Kenneth Yost, officer Tom Ballman, and Sergeant Bill Biggs along with Thornton lie dead. Reporter Todd Smith is in satisfactory condition. Kirkwood Mayor Mike Swoboda was critically injured with a gunshot wound to his head. Newspaper reporter Todd Smith suffered an injury to his hand.

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Six dead after gunman opens fire at Kirkwood City Council meeting

By CHRISTOPHER LEONARD

Associated Press Writer

KIRKWOOD, Mo. (AP) -- Ten days after losing a free-speech lawsuit against this St. Louis suburb, a gunman stormed a council meeting, yelled "Shoot the mayor!" and opened fire, critically wounding the mayor, killing two police officers and three city officials.

The gunman, identified as Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton, was fatally shot by law enforcers. He had claimed in the past city leaders stifled and harassed him.

KMOV

"The only way that I can put into context that you might understand is that my brother went to war tonight with the people, the government that was putting torment and strife into his life," Thornton's brother, Gerald Thornton, told KMOV-TV of St. Louis.

"Understand that this was an act of war by my brother. He had an actual person, or people, that he was in battle with. That this was not a random rampage," Thornton's brother, Gerald Thornton, told MSNBC outside City Hall Friday.

The city had ticketed Thornton's demolition and asphalt business, Cookco Construction, for parking his commercial vehicles in the neighborhood, said Ron Hodges, a friend who lives in the community. Thornton had said at previous meetings he received 150 tickets. The tickets were "eating at him," Hodges said.

"He felt that as a black contractor he was being singled out," said Hodges, who is black. "I guess he thought mentally he had no more recourse. That's not an excuse."

Thornton left a suicide note on his bed warning "The truth will come out in the end," before he went on a deadly shooting spree at a council meeting, his brother told The Associated Press Friday.

Arthur Thornton, 42, said in an interview at the family's home that he knew his brother was responsible for the killings when he read the one-line note.

"It looks like my brother is going crazy, but he's just trying to get people's attention," Thornton said, explaining he believed the note reflected his brother's growing frustration with local leaders. Police have the note, he said.

The meeting had just started when the shooter opened fire, said Janet McNichols, a reporter covering the meeting for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The gunman killed one officer outside City Hall, then walked into the council chambers, shot another and continued pulling the trigger, said Tracy Panus, a St. Louis County Police spokeswoman. A witness said the gunman yelled "Shoot the mayor!" as he fired shots in the chambers, hitting Mayor Mike Swoboda. Officer Tom Ballman was shot in the head, McNichols said.

Then, the shooter went after Public Works Director Kenneth Yost, who was sitting in front of Swoboda, and shot Yost in the head, McNichols said.

As he fired at City Attorney John Hessel, Hessel tried to fight off the attacker by throwing chairs, McNichols said. The shooter then moved behind the desk where the council sits and fired more shots at council members.

"We crawled under the chairs and just laid there," McNichols told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Friday. "We heard Cookie shooting, and then we heard some shouting, and the police, the Kirkwood police had heard what was going on, and they ran in, and they shot him."

McNichols told the Post-Dispatch council members Michael H.T. Lynch and Connie Karr also were hit. She identified the gunman as Charles Thornton, whom she knows from covering the council.

The names of the victims would not be released until a news conference Friday morning, Panus said. Swoboda was in critical condition Friday morning in the intensive-care unit of St. John's Mercy Medical Center in Creve Coeur, hospital spokesman Lynne Beck said. Another victim, Suburban Journals newspaper reporter Todd Smith, was in satisfactory condition Friday, Beck said.

Yellow police tape circled the entire block that includes City Hall. An impromptu memorial was growing on the City Hall's steps, where balloons and flowers were placed in memory of the victims.

Thornton was often a contentious presence at the council's meetings; he had twice been convicted of disorderly conduct for disrupting meetings in May 2006.

The weekly Webster-Kirkwood Times quoted Swoboda as saying in June 2006 that Thornton's contentious remarks over the years created "one of the most embarrassing situations that I have experienced in my many years of public service."

The mayor's comments came during a meeting attended by Thornton two weeks after he was forcibly removed from the chambers. Swoboda had said the council considered banning Thornton from future meetings but decided against it.

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Kirkwood Mayor Mike Swoboda

In a federal lawsuit stemming from his arrests during two meetings just weeks apart, Thornton insisted that Kirkwood officials violated his constitutional rights to free speech by barring him from speaking at the meetings.

But a judge in St. Louis tossed out the lawsuit Jan. 28, writing that "any restrictions on Thornton's speech were reasonable, viewpoint neutral, and served important governmental interests."

Gerald Thornton said the legal setback may have been his brother's final straw. "He has (spoken) on it as best he could in the courts, and they denied all rights to the access of protection and he took it upon himself to go to war and end the issue," he said.

The police department's chaplain said law enforcers from several agencies were anguished over the shootings.

"They're all just so sad, shocked by this," said Father Robert Osborne of St. Peter Catholic Church. "This doesn't happen in Kirkwood."

KMOV

Charles "Cookie" Thornton

Kirkwood is about 20 miles southwest of downtown St. Louis. City Hall is in a quiet area filled with condominiums, eateries and shops, not far from a dance studio and train station. Despite its reputation locally for serenity, the city has grappled in recent years with crimes that brought it unwanted attention.

Down the street from City Hall is the Imo's pizzeria once managed by Michael Devlin, who kidnapped 11-year-old Shawn Hornbeck in 2002 and held him for four years before authorities rescued him in January 2007. Also rescued was Ben Ownby, another teenager Devlin abducted just days before Devlin's arrest.

Those crimes got Devlin life terms on state charges, as well as 170 years behind bars on federal charges that he made pornography.

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Associated Press writers Jim Suhr in St. Louis and Betsy Taylor in Creve Coeur contributed to this report.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)