Police slay Seton Hill college student _ after standoff laced with gunfire_following after student spends valentines night at local strip club

Briggs, who — according to the university — is from Dickerson, Md., had been barricaded inside the house for three hours before the shooting, said Trooper Jeanne Martin, state police spokeswoman. She said Briggs had fired "numerous rounds from a variety of guns" out of the windows of his residence during the standoff, striking parked cars and at least one house.

City police were summoned to the house at 4 a.m. after three men and a woman who fled the residence reported that Briggs had threatened them and himself with guns. Briggs fired out of the residence toward the officers when they arrived, Martin said.

Troopers from the state police's Special Emergency Response Team were called to assist. Martin said at least three nearby residences were evacuated.

Over the next three hours, Briggs broke windows and threw objects out the windows of the house. Martin said he shot at police several dozen times.

"Briggs fired at least 30 to 40 times," Martin said. "When you have that kind of volume of gunfire, we're very lucky that nobody else was hurt."

A neighbor, Bertha Haney of Summit Apartments, said she was awakened to the sound of loud "bangs" at 4 a.m., but she did not recognize them as gunshots. Another neighbor, Chuck Hill, said he was up when the gunfire started but did not leave his apartment until the gunfire stopped.

"This is something else," Hill said last night as he walked past Concord Street, which remained cordoned off with yellow police tape 12 hours after the shooting. "I wonder what would make a guy do that?"

State police said Briggs "may have been having some personal problems in regards to a relationship." He and a roommate had been out drinking Saturday evening at the Filly Corral, a strip club near Smithton.

Briggs, who police said was "heavily intoxicated," began firing a weapon from a car as it traveled along Interstate 70 earlier in the evening, Martin said. A passenger in the car, Briggs was acting irrationally and firing randomly out the car window as the vehicle traveled toward Greensburg, Martin said.

"This is something else," Hill said last night as he walked past Concord Street, which remained cordoned off with yellow police tape 12 hours after the shooting. "I wonder what would make a guy do that?"

State police said Briggs "may have been having some personal problems in regards to a relationship." He and a roommate had been out drinking Saturday evening at the Filly Corral, a strip club near Smithton.


wooooooo