Gunman kills five in Pittsburgh

Friends and family are comforted at the Ya Fei restaurant

Five people have been shot dead and another critically wounded in the suburbs of the north-eastern US city of Pittsburgh.

Police are questioning a 34-year-old lawyer, Richard Baumhammers, in connection with the killings, which they say appear to have been racially motivated.

He was caught after a 20-mile chase, and has since been charged with homicide.

Police said other charges were likely to follow.

The dead included two employees of a Chinese restaurant, a black karate student, an Indian and a Jewish neighbour of the suspect.

The police said the shooting spree began after Baumhammers set a house ablaze in the wealthy town of Mount Lebanon and then shot an unidentified woman there.

Baumhammers is in jail

The two Chinese restaurant workers were killed at the Ya Fei Chinese Restaurant in Robinson Town Centre, about 8 miles (14km) west of Pittsburgh.

The fourth victim was a karate student at the CS Kim Karate School in Centre Township in Beaver County.

Two other people, both Indian, were shot at an Indian grocery in Carnegie, and one died, police and hospital officials said.

The other, a 25-year-old man, was reported to be in a critical condition, wounded in the upper back and neck.

Synagogue attacks

The gunman also fired shots at two synagogues, but no one was injured, police said. A swastika and the word "Jew" had been sprayed on one of the buildings.

Vinh Truong, a cook at Ya Fei restaurant, said his brother-in-law had been killed.

Mr Truong was in the kitchen when another employee ran from the front of the restaurant, telling everyone to escape.

"I see my brother Tony on the floor," said Mr Truong.

"I tell everybody 'Somebody shot Tony."'

It's the second shooting spree in less than two months in Pittsburg that appears to have race as its motive.

In March, a black man went on the rampage, killing three white men and wounding two others.

The latest shootings come less than a week after seven people were shot at the National Zoo in Washington, D C.