British police said Friday they were investigating the background of a man who obtained a firearms license and shot dead five people, including a young girl, in the southwest port city of Plymouth.
No motive has yet emerged for Thursday evening's shooting rampage that police said was carried out by 22-year-old gunman Jake Davison, who killed himself after the six-minute spree in a quiet residential area not far from western Europe's biggest naval base.
But Devon and Cornwall Police ruled out terrorism, including with far-right groups, and said there was a "familial relationship" with Davison's first victim.
After killing the woman at her house, Davison shot and killed a "very young girl" and her male relative on the road outside, before claiming the lives of a man and woman nearby, Chief Constable Shaun Sawyer told reporters.
Another two local residents received "significant" but not life-threatening gunshot wounds, he said.
Sawyer did not give the girl's age, but Plymouth MP Luke Pollard tweeted that she was under 10 years old, joining other local and national leaders in expressing shock and grief.
"Hearing that one of the dead is a small child is utterly heartbreaking," Plymouth Member of Parliament Luke Pollard tweeted.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted: "My thoughts are with the friends and family of those who lost their lives and with all those affected by the tragic incident in Plymouth last night."
A witness named Sharron told BBC News she had heard shouting followed by several gunshots.
"This was when the shooter kicked in the door of a house and randomly started shooting," she said.
A single gun was recovered from the scene after Davison shot himself, but the police chief was unable to confirm witness accounts that it was a pump-action shotgun. He did confirm that as of 2020, Davison held a firearms license.
Britain has some of the Western world's toughest gun controls and police are not routinely armed.
Private ownership of handguns was outlawed in nearly all cases after a school massacre in the Scottish town of Dunblane in 1996, which claimed the lives of 16 young pupils and their teacher in Britain's worst mass shooting to date.
But ownership of sporting rifles and shotguns is allowed, subject to strict licensing rules.
Licenses last five years, and are meant to be granted only after thorough police background checks, including for mental illness.
The incident marks the worst mass shooting in the U.K. in more than a decade. Britain's last mass shooting was in June 2010, when taxi driver Derrick Bird killed 12 people in Cumbria, northwest England.
Davison's social media channels indicated an interest in guns, right-wing libertarian politics and "shoot-em-up" video games.
The content suggested a self-pitying loner, alienated from his family and hostile to women.
On Facebook, Davison said he was originally from the US city of Phoenix, Arizona, but that was not substantiated in local accounts.
He listed his employer in Plymouth as Babcock International, a UK engineering services company active in the city's naval docks.
He was reportedly a trainee crane operator in the docks, after working as a scaffolder in his late teens.
YouTube deleted his own content on Friday morning. Prior to being taken down, it mostly showed him lifting weights in his home gym.
In one message to camera, in a strong English west-country accent, he ranted about women in misogynistic terms. In the last upload, on July 28, he spoke of feeling "beaten down and defeated" by life.
The last external video he "liked" on YouTube, this week, was of a series of shots fired from a World War II US rifle.
Sawyer defended the police response, insisting that armed response units were quickly at the scene, but too late to engage with Davison before he killed himself.
"We believe we have an incident that is domestically related that has spilled over into the streets," said Sawyer, adding that police were examining Davison's social media activity, hard drives, and home life.
The chief constable said he could not confirm whether Davison's firearms license covered the weapon used on Thursday.
An "independent review" would look into how he obtained the license, and whether the gunman had any mental health issues.
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