State police Superintendent Joseph D'Amico said state police and FBI tactical teams entered the first-floor of a building in Herkimer around 8 a.m. to end the standoff with Myers, 64, of neighboring Mohawk. Myers opened fire through a door at officers, killing an FBI dog, D'Amico said.
Police returned fire, killing Myers, he said. No officers were injured.
Myers' death ended a nearly 24-hour ordeal that engulfed the Mohawk Valley villages, where police say Myers killed four men and two wounded two others at a barbershop in Mohawk and a car care business in Herkimer.
D'Amico said police still don't know why Myers went to the two small businesses and opened fire with a shotgun. He called the attacks "unprovoked and random."
"He's apparently a loner," D'Amico said. "He didn't have a lot of contact with his family. The few people we did find that were relatives — we interviewed some neighbors — nobody could offer any explanation."
Authorities said Myers opened fire on police at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday along a block in Herkimer as they searched for him in the hours after the shootings. They surrounded an abandoned bar called Glory Days where they believed he was holed up. Police had said earlier that they were willing to wait out Myers. But Thursday morning they sent in the SWAT teams.
"It just seemed like the appropriate time," D'Amico said, with elaborating.
Police say Myers sauntered into a barbershop Wednesday, coolly asked if the man cutting hair remembered him and then opened fire with a shotgun, the first shots in a burst of violence that would leave four dead, two critically wounded.
"We commend the courage and extraordinary efforts of the state police, the FBI and local law enforcement officials in finding the suspect and ending this horrific spree of violence and bloodshed," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a statement Thursday morning. "It's now time for mourning those who we lost in this senseless act of violence."
John Seymour, one of the men wounded in the attacks told his sister, Mary Hornett, the barbershop attack came out of nowhere.
"He just said that the guys were in the barbershop and this guy comes in and he says, 'Hi John, do you remember me?' and my brother said, 'Yes, Kurt, how are you?' and then he just started shooting," Hornett said.
Hornett said her brother, who was hospitalized in critical condition, was doing well after being shot in the left hand and right hip.
"My brother couldn't think of any reason why he would do such a thing," she said of Myers, a former customer who hadn't been in the shop for a couple of years.
The shootings shattered the peace and rattled the nerves of Mohawk and Herkimer, two small villages about 170 miles northwest of New York City, separated from each other by the Mohawk River and the New York State Thruway.
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