Gunman kills four at Nevada pancake restaurant

A man armed with an AK-47 assault rifle killed four people in a shooting rampage, including three National Guardsmen, and wounded seven others during the breakfast rush at an IHOP in the Nevada state capital Carson City. Then the gunman, Eduardo Sencion, 32, of Carson City turned the gun on himself. The investigators are trying to determine the motives and whether the man targeted a group of National Guard personnel in the restaurant, police said.

Of the 12 people shot in the rampage, five were National Guard members who were sitting together, all in uniform, in the back of the restaurant. According to Los Angeles Times, the suspect drove a blue minivan about 9 a.m into a strip mall on Carson Street, a main throughway in the city, and began shooting at a woman on a motorcycle, Bethany Drysdale.

Sencion then stormed into the IHOP through the front door, went to the back of the restaurant where five National Guard members were eating breakfast, and opened fire. All five guardsmen and a woman were hit, Drysdale said.

The woman and two of the guardsmen later died of their wounds.

Investigators believe Sencion, who died Tuesday afternoon at a Reno hospital, acted alone.

Sencion had no tie to the National Guard and never served in the military, said the Carson City Sheriff.

Witnesses described a scene of horror and chaos after Sencion pulled up at the IHOP in a blue minivan just before 9 a.m. and ran into the restaurant, already firing his assault weapon.

"All I heard was about a heavy eight seconds of automatic gunfire," said Nick Teply, who was at the McDonald's drive-through next door. "I just froze trying to identify which direction it was coming from".

Family members suggest "mental issues" as motives for the shooting.

A.Kola