A tense standoff between police and a gunman who had stormed into a veterans home in California and taken three employees hostage came to a grim end Friday night when officers entered the room the gunman was in to find him and all three hostages dead.
The man had shown up at the largest veterans home in the United States with a rifle in the morning and exchanged gunfire with a sheriff's deputy before crashing a farewell party for employees of a organization that works with recent veterans and taking a number of hostages.
The confrontation stretched throughout the day and into the night; officials said that a number of hostages had been released early on, but three employees remained in a room with the gunman and teams of federal, state and local law enforcement officials and hostage negotiators from three agencies had been unable to make contact with the gunman or the hostages.