[chris]

Seven people, including an 11-year-old boy the gunman chased through the neighborhood, were shot to death in Copley Township, Ohio, on the morning of Aug. 7, 2011, before a township police officer killed the attacker, authorities said. The gunman, 51-year-old Michael E. Hance, opened fire around 11 a.m. and was dead within about 10 minutes.

The rampage began at Hance's own home near Goodenough Avenue, where he first shot his girlfriend, 49-year-old Rebecca K. Dieter, according to investigators. Dieter was struck several times but survived by lying still and playing dead after she managed to call 911. She was the only person Hance shot who lived.

Hance then moved to an adjacent house and into nearby yards, police said. The dead included Dieter's brother, Craig Dieter, and his 11-year-old son, Scott; neighbors Russell Johnson, 67, and his wife, Gudrun Johnson, 64; the couple's son, Bryan Johnson, 44; Bryan's 16-year-old daughter, Autumn Johnson; and Autumn's friend, 16-year-old Amelia Shambaugh, who was shot as she sat in a parked car. Hance chased Bryan Johnson down a street and killed him in a driveway on Schocalog Road, according to police accounts.

Frightened residents flooded 911 lines as the shooting spread. "Someone is running around the neighborhood shooting a gun," one woman told a dispatcher before turning to warn others in the house to get on the floor, according to recordings released by police. Another caller reported a body lying in a driveway, and a woman who had locked herself in her basement was told by a dispatcher to stay where she was.

Copley Township Officer Ben Campbell went looking for the gunman without waiting for backup and confronted Hance as he stepped out of the last house, police said. When Hance raised a handgun and ignored commands to drop it, Campbell fired three shots, hitting him twice and killing him, investigators said. Hance was carrying a .45-caliber pistol and a .357 Magnum revolver he had bought years earlier.

Investigators said they never pinned down a clear motive. Hance had quarreled with the Johnson family over small grievances, including a child firing a BB gun near his property, and left behind rambling notes, according to police, who described him as a delusional man with an untreated mental illness. Dieter later told reporters the killings may have grown in part out of a dispute over a family estate.

A county review cleared Campbell in the shooting. He went on to receive a national Top Cops award and, in 2013, the Law Enforcement Congressional Badge of Bravery for ending the rampage. Residents of Copley Township gathered to remember the victims on the first anniversary of the killings.