There have been “several fatalities” in a shooting at a Smithsburg, Maryland factory, police said, who have not yet released an exact death toll. The member of the House of Representatives representing the region, Democrat David Trone, has called the incident a “mass shooting” on Twitter.
The sheriff wrote in a message on Facebook that “the suspect no longer poses a threat to the community”. According to local media reports, he was shot by officers and taken to a hospital. His motive and what led to the shooting are not yet known.
Smithsburg is about 75 miles northwest of Baltimore.
The US has been regularly rocked by mass shootings lately. At the end of May, for example, an 18-year-old opened fire at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. The gunman holed up in a classroom and killed 19 children and two teachers before being shot dead by police. A few days earlier, a gunman opened fire at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, killing ten people and injuring three others.