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5 killed in Illinois village shooting; suspect slain in shootout

Posted at 2:09 PM, Apr 24, 2013
and last updated 2013-04-24 14:27:41-04

(CNN) — Five people were killed and a6-year-old girl was taken to a hospitalafter a shooting in a tiny western Illinois village early Wednesday, officials said.

A suspect in the slaughter in Manchester, Illinois, was killed following a chase and shootout with police hours later, authorities said.

“There is no reason to believe there is any further danger to the communities or that there are any other suspects,” Illinois state police Lt. Col. Todd Kilby told reporters late Wednesday morning.

The incident disrupted the village of about 290 people and surrounding communities, with area schools closing for the day, according to police in nearby Winchester.

Police said they were called to an apartment building in Manchester — roughly 40 miles southwest of Springfield — at about 4:30 a.m. (5:30 a.m. ET).

Officers found five people dead, Kilby said. Manchester Mayor Ronald Drake told CNN that they were killed in a shooting.

A 6-year-old girl was transported to a hospital, Kilby said. Police didn’t say whether she was hurt.

Witnesses gave police a description of the vehicle in which the attacker fled and police found the suspect in an undisclosed location at about 7:15 a.m., Kilby said.

Police chased and eventually exchanged gunfire with the suspect, who suffered undisclosed injuries. He was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Kilby said.

He said authorities were not releasing information about a motive in the case or the possible relationships between the victims and the suspect.

Manchester is in sparsely populated Scott County. The county had fewer than 6,000 residents as of the 2010 census.

“Fortunately, this type of thing doesn’t happen here very often, but this is proof that it can happen,” Scott County state’s attorney Michael Hill told reporters.

CNN’s Karan Olson, Jason Hanna and Kara Devlin contributed to this report.

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