Charles Lee Thornton
KIRKWOOD, Missouri (CNN) -- A gunman killed five people and wounded two Thursday night at a police station and City Council meeting in suburban St. Louis before officers shot and killed him, police said.
Charles Lee Thornton, here in an undated photo, was identified by witnesses as the gunman who opened fire.
Two police officers were among the dead, said Tracy Panus, spokeswoman for the St. Louis County police.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported the dead included Councilwoman Connie Karr, Public Works Director Kenneth Yost and police officers Tom Ballman and William Biggs.
Mayor Mike Swoboda was wounded and in critical condition, and Suburban Journals newspaper reporter Todd Smith was in satisfactory condition, St. John's Mercy Hospital spokesman Bill McShane told The Associated Press.
The shootings began shortly after 7 p.m. just outside the Kirkwood City Hall when a man approached a police officer in the parking lot of the Kirkwood police station and fatally shot him, Panus said. The officer died at the scene.
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The suspect then went into the City Council chambers and killed a second police officer before fatally shooting three city officials who were attending the meeting, Panus said.
Kirkwood police officers returned fire, Panus said, killing the suspect.
A correspondent for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Janet McNichols, who was at the City Council meeting when the shootings took place, identified the gunman as Charles Lee Thornton, the newspaper reported.
Thornton sued the city of Kirkwood after he was arrested twice for disorderly conduct at two council meetings in 2006. He later was convicted, according to the First Amendment Center, a group that says it works to preserve First Amendment freedoms.
An eyewitness to the shootings told CNN that Thornton -- whose nickname was "Cookie" -- had disrupted City Council meetings frequently in the past.
"He would make inappropriate noises, heehawing like a donkey. He would make derogatory comments towards the director of public works, the city attorney and the mayor," Alan Hopefl said Friday. "None of it seemed to make any sense as far as him trying to make a point, as far as why he was really there and what his major complaints were."
Thornton's brother, Gerald, told CNN affiliate KMOV-TV in St. Louis that his brother had serious grievances with the city government.
"The only way that I can put it in a context that you might understand is that my brother went to war tonight with the people that were of the government that was putting torment and strife into his life," Thornton told KMOV.
Rather than discussing the subject at hand, Perry wrote, "Thornton engaged in personal attacks against the mayor, Kirkwood and the city council. ... Because Thornton does not have a First Amendment right to engage in irrelevant debate and to voice repetitive, personal, virulent attacks against Kirkwood and its city officials during the comment portion of a city council public hearing, his claim fails as a m