A lengthy feud erupts in death

KIRKWOOD, Mo. - A gunman carrying a grudge against City Hall left a suicide note on his bed warning "the truth will come out in the end," before he went on a deadly shooting rampage at a council meeting, his brother said yesterday.

Arthur Thornton, 42, said in an interview that he knew when he read the one-line note that Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton was the man who had stormed the meeting Thursday night and killed five people before police shot him dead.

"I want to say for my family that I'm truly, truly sorry," Arthur Thornton said, breaking into tears. "I'm so sorry. This didn't have to happen."

Friends and relatives said the gunman had a long-standing feud with the city, and he had lost a federal free-speech lawsuit against the St. Louis suburb 10 days earlier. At earlier meetings, he said he had received 150 tickets against his business.

The victims were identified as Public Works Director Kenneth Yost, Officer Tom Ballman, Officer William Biggs, and council members Michael H.T. Lynch and Connie Karr. Flowers and balloons were placed outside City Hall in a memorial to the slain officials.

At a midday prayer vigil at the local United Methodist church, a bell tolled as hundreds of mourners held white candles honoring them.

"As far too often, violence divides us," the Rev. David Bemmett told the throng. "Let us not let the actions of one man define who we are."

Mayor Mike Swoboda remained in critical condition at an intensive-care unit, St. John's Mercy Medical Center spokeswoman Lynne Beck said. Suburban Journals newspaper reporter Todd Smith was in satisfactory condition.

"The business of the city will continue," Tim Griffin, Kirkwood's deputy mayor, said at a news conference, "and we will recover, but we will never be the same."

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, St. Louis County Police spokeswoman Tracy Panus said yesterday.

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 city had ticketed his demolition and asphalt business, Cookco Construction, for parking his commercial vehicles in the neighborhood, said Ron Hodges, a Thornton friend.

The tickets were "eating at him," Hodges said.

"He felt that as a black contractor he was being singled out," Hodges said.

Franklin McCallie, a friend of Thornton's, said Thornton once told him that the city would drop the fines, which totaled in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, if he "would just follow the law."

"In our long talks, I begged him to do this," McCallie said. "But Cookie said it was a matter of principle with him and that he wanted to sue the city for millions of dollars."

Thornton had been forcibly removed from chambers before. Swoboda had said the council considered banning Thornton from future meetings but decided against it.

In a federal lawsuit stemming from his arrests during two meetings just weeks apart, Thornton insisted that officials violated his 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."

A 23-year-old woman

killed two fellow students with a .357 revolver in a classroom at a vocational college in Baton Rouge, La., yesterday, then shot herself in the head.

The victims

apparently

were shot in their seats in the classroom at Louisiana Technical College, Sgt. Don

Kelly said. About 20 people were in the emergency medical technology class.

Police said they

did not have a motive for the shooting and did not immediately release the shooter's name because her relatives had not been contacted.

Officers ran

into the building within four minutes of the first

911 call at 8:36 a.m. "There was mass pandemonium,"

Kelly said. "One officer,

the first into the classroom, told me he could still smell gunpowder."

Classes were canceled

through Tuesday, said

Jim Henderson, vice president of the Louisiana Community and Technical College System.

- Associated Press