French Gunman Jumps To His Death

The suspect in a shooting rampage that left eight people dead at a city council meeting in suburban Paris killed himself Thursday by jumping out a window at police headquarters, police said.

The gunman was being questioned by a police captain in the Criminal Brigade building in Paris, reports CBS News Correspondent Elaine Cobbe. Suddenly, he got up and rushed to the small window in the room, climbed up and threw himself out. He fell five floors to the courtyard below, where he died a few minutes later.

Richard Durn's apparent suicide brought another shock to a country already reeling from the rampage a day earlier at the city hall in suburban Nanterre.

"The two officers tried to hold him by his legs, but the determination of the crazed gunman, most of whose body was already hanging outside, made their attempt fruitless," a police statement said.

Durn, 33, was known to be depressive and suicidal. Police found a 13-page letter at his home, in which he said he wanted to kill himself, and he wanted it to be a public act.

Durn, who was unemployed but volunteered at a human rights organization and had a master's degree in political science, had been in police custody since killing eight officials at the Nanterre city council meeting early Wednesday. Another 19 people were injured.

The massacre prompted questions over a how a man with a troubled past was licensed to carry handguns, despite strict French gun-control laws. Durn belonged to a recreational shooting club, and had come to city hall armed with two Glock semiautomatics and a .357 Magnum.

Now, the question sure to grip the country is how Durn was able to kill himself while in police custody.

"How can you kill yourself at police headquarters?" asked Lucien Batard, Nanterre's deputy mayor, shortly after Durn's death.

"I didn't think someone at criminal police headquarters would have so much liberty of movement that he could jump out a window," Batard said on French radio, adding that he felt sickened that Durn was able to carry his plan through to the end: "He killed the largest possible number of officials and he killed himself afterward."

One survivor of the massacre expressed disappointment that Durn would never stand trial.

"I would have liked to know the truth about his past...to know where the fault lines were," said Samuel Rijik, a municipal official who hid under a table to save himself during the massacre at city hall in suburban Nanterre, near Paris.

Nanterre Mayor Jacqueline Fraysse said the attacker yelled out, "Kill me, kill me" as he was brought under control in the council chamber in the Paris suburb. And during a day of interrogation, Durn told police he often "thought about killing someone and killing himself afterward."

Durn's 65-year-old mother, Stephanie, said her son began psychotherapy in 1990, asking the therapist to "Help me to die."

Durn had no criminal record. His mother said her son once held a part-time job as a hall monitor at a local school. A prosecutor said Durn had failed several exams for teaching and other positions.

Beginning in 1998, the prosecutor said, Durn made several trips to Bosnia with relief organizations and was currently volunteering as Nanterre chapter treasurer of the Human Rights League.

Unemployed, friendless and still living with his mother, Durn had already tried twice to commit suicide. More recently, he decided he wanted to end his days in such a way that he could not be forgotten in death as he felt he had been in life.

In three separate letters sent to acquaintances and left at home, Durn wrote: "I've gone mad, become a drop out and must therefore die."

His mother, a 65-year old Slovenian immigrant who worked as a cleaning lady in the working-class suburb to raise her son and his half-sister, said Durn often spoke of killing people.

"Richard felt worthless, crap, burnt out and a loser. He couldn't bear life any longer," she told the daily Le Parisien. "For him, death was the only solution. But, he didn't want to die alone, he wanted to kill as many people as possible."

A chronic depressive, Durn felt cheated by society.

"The explanation for his act lies in the feeling he had of total personal failure for which he blamed the society in which he lived," Nanterre Public Prosecutor Yves Bot told journalists.

"He said he had been blocked at every turn and used. He wanted to control events, control his life, kill people and then himself."

He drifted from job to job and tried in vain to get involved in local affairs and humanitarian causes. He became increasingly obsessed with guns.

Pupils at the school where he briefly worked as a monitor teased him as bumbling and anti-social.

Psychiatrists said Durn's life and feelings of worthlessness mirrored the backgrounds of other mass murderers.

"Since this type of person cannot bear his existence as a loser, he seeks to make others responsible for his own failures," criminologist Stephane Bourgoin told Le Parisien.