[chris]

Six people were killed and two were wounded in Seattle when 28-year-old Kyle Aaron Huff, invited back to a Capitol Hill afterparty, returned from his pickup with a shotgun and a handgun and opened fire before killing himself on the front steps as the first officer arrived, Seattle police said.

Dispatchers began taking calls at about 7:03 a.m. on March 25, 2006, from the 2100 block of East Republican Street. At least 17 calls came in over the next few minutes, some from neighbors who heard the shooting and some from people still inside the house, whispering into cell phones, according to a review of the case prepared for the Seattle Police Department.

Officer Steve Leonard was patrolling near the address and heard the gunfire before the dispatch reached him, the review said. He arrived at about 7:05 a.m. and saw a wounded man stumble out the west side of the house and go down near the driveway. Huff walked toward him. Leonard had not finished ordering him to drop the weapon when Huff put the shotgun in his mouth and fired.

Huff had spent the night before at a zombie-themed rave at the Capitol Hill Arts Center, where he was mostly quiet and did not dance. He was invited to the afterparty at about 3:30 a.m. by Jeremy Martin, 26, one of the residents, who offered him a drink from a flask. Around sunrise, Huff left, went to his truck for a 12-gauge shotgun, a .40-caliber handgun and two bandoliers of buckshot, and stopped on the way back to spray-paint the word "NOW" on the sidewalk and on a neighbor's steps.

The shooting lasted about four minutes. Survivors told investigators Huff said there was "plenty for everyone" as he went up the stairs to look for more people. Two who locked themselves in a bathroom were not hit when he fired through the door. Killed were Christopher Williamson, 21, Melissa Moore, 14, Justin Schwartz, 22, Jason Travers, 32, Suzanne Thorne, 15, and Martin, who died later at Harborview Medical Center. Two other people were shot and survived.

Officers pulled unhurt guests out of closets and from behind furniture, and woke one who had slept through it. Detectives recovered eight fired shotgun shells and five handgun casings. An AR-15 rifle, more ammunition, a baseball bat, a machete and two cans of gasoline were in the truck.

Because Huff was dead, there was no prosecution, and the department asked a panel of outside experts to account for what it could. The panel's report, released in July 2006, concluded the attack was planned and methodical rather than a sudden loss of control, and that it was not random: the victims were targets of opportunity, but Huff had sought out the rave community for the attack. Unemployed and largely alone since moving to Seattle from Whitefish, Montana, in 2001, he appeared to have settled his grievances on ravers, the panel found. It reported no simple explanation and no warning signs anyone, including his twin brother, could have acted on, and noted that his self-inflicted head wound had ruled out any examination of his brain at autopsy.

The audio attached to this thread is emergency radio and dispatch traffic from the response that morning.