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Rampaging French pensioner was lovesick: investigators
Mar 4, 2011, 11:08 GMT
Paris - A 78-year-old plumber, who killed three people in a shooting rampage in a village in southern France on Thursday, had gone into a blind rage after his 30-year-old girlfriend told him she was leaving him, it emerged Friday.
Joachim Toro took his rifle and began shooting wildly around him after receiving the news from his girlfriend, the prosecutor investigating the killings in the village of Rivesaltes, near Perpignan, said.
The woman, who had taken a friend with her because she feared Toro's reaction, was slightly injured in the arm as she fled the scene by car.
The shooter, described by his neighbours as an amiable person, then began shooting at people around him, killing a 72-year-old man and two municipal workers, one aged 36, the other 42.
He then turned the gun on himself, but survived.
He was recovering in a Perpignan hospital after undergoing emergency surgery late Thursday.
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