- Gunman kills N.Y. firefighters
Dawn Nguyen of Rochester faces a
state charge of filing a falsified business record, State Police Senior
Investigator James Sewell said. Nguyen also faces a federal charge; a
news conference with the U.S. attorney in western New York was scheduled
for 4 p.m. Friday.
Sewell said the state charge is
connected to the purchase of an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and a 12-gauge
shotgun that William Spengler had with him Monday when firefighters
Michael Chiapperini and Tomasz Kaczowka were gunned down. Three other
people were wounded before the 62-year-old Spengler killed himself. He
also had a .38-caliber revolver, but Nguyen is not connected to that
gun, Sewell said.
The .223-caliber Bushmaster
rifle, which had a combat-style flash suppressor, is similar to the one
used by the gunman who massacred 20 children and six women in a Newtown,
Conn., elementary school earlier this month.
Nguyen and her mother, Dawn
Welsher, lived next door to Spengler in 2008. On Wednesday and again on
Friday, shortly before her arrest, she answered her cellphone and told
The Associated Press that she didn't want to talk about Spengler. Her
brother, Steven Nguyen, told the Democrat and Chronicle newspaper of
Rochester that Spengler stole the guns from Dawn Nguyen.
A number listed in the name of her lawyer, David Palmiere, was disconnected.
Spengler set a car on fire and
touched off an inferno in his Webster home on a strip of land along the
Lake Ontario shore, took up a sniper's position and opened fire on the
first firefighters to arrive at about 5:30 a.m. on Christmas Eve,
authorities said. He wounded two other firefighters and an off-duty
police officer who was on his way to work.
A Webster police officer who had
accompanied the firefighters shot back at Spengler with a rifle in a
brief exchange of gunfire before the gunman killed himself.
Spengler spent 17 years in prison
for killing his grandmother in 1980 and was barred from possessing
weapons as a convicted felon.
Investigators still haven't
released the identity of remains found in William Spengler's burned
house. They have said they believe the remains are those of his
67-year-old sister, Cheryl Spengler, who also lived in the house near
Rochester and has been unaccounted for since the killings. The Spengler
siblings had lived in the home with their mother, Arline Spengler, who
died in October. In all, seven houses were destroyed by the flames.
Investigators found a rambling,
typed letter laying out Spengler's intention to destroy his neighborhood
and "do what I like doing best, killing people."
He had been released from parole
in 2006 on the manslaughter conviction, and authorities said they had
had no encounters with him since.
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