Authorities say hate motivated Kansas shooting

Prosecutors have enough evidence to pursue hate-crime charges in the shooting spree that killed three people at a Jewish community center and retirement complex near Kansas City, authorities said today, a day after the attack.
Frazier Glenn Cross of Missouri, a known white supremacist, has not been formally charged in the slayings, but officials said more information about charges was expected tomorrow. Federal prosecutors were moving to put the case before a grand jury.
Police suspect Cross fatally shot two people yesterday afternoon in the parking lot behind the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City, then drove to a retirement community where he shot a third person. He was arrested in an elementary school parking lot.

"We have unquestionably determined through the work of law enforcement that this was a hate crime," Overland Park Police Chief John Douglass said, refusing to elaborate on the evidence.
Cross, a former Ku Klux Klan leader who was once the subject of a nationwide manhunt, was jailed on a preliminary charge of first-degree murder.
Douglass said the suspect made several statements to police, "but it's too early to tell you what he may or may not have said" during the attacks. He also said it was too early in the investigation to determine whether Cross had an anti-Semitic motive. The Jewish festival of Passover begins today.

SITE, a US-based terror monitoring group, described the suspect as a known and vocal anti-Semite who frequently calls for genocide against Jews.

Police said the attacks happened within minutes. The gunman shot two people in the parking lot behind the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City. He then drove a few blocks to a retirement community, Village Shalom, and gunned down a woman or girl there, Douglass said. Officers arrested him in an elementary school parking lot soon after.
The gunman shot at but missed two other people and never entered any buildings, police said.
The victims were identified as Dr. William Lewis Corporon, who died at the scene; his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood, who died at Overland Park Regional Medical Center; and 53-year-old occupational therapist Terri LaManno, a Catholic who was visiting her mother at the retirement complex near the community center.

Rebecca Sturtevant, a hospital spokeswoman, said family members told her Corporon took his grandson to the community center to try out for a student singing competition. Reat was a high school freshman and an Eagle Scout.