Police in Missouri say two police officers and three people attending a Kirkwood city council meeting Thursday are dead because of a gunman who stormed the meeting and opened fire.

A reporter covering the meeting for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch tells the newspaper that the meeting had just started when the shooter rushed in and opened fire with at least one weapon.

She says the shooter started yelling about shooting the mayor while walking around and firing, hitting a police officer in the head. The reporter says the mayor was wounded.

She identified the gunman as Charles Lee Thornton. The reporter says Thornton was often a contentious presence, as he had twice been convicted of disorderly conduct for disrupting meetings in May of 2006.