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UPDATED (3/13, 5:27 p.m.): Gov. Cuomo - Herkimer shootings a "senseless horror"

HERKIMER, N.Y. (AP) — Police say they're searching an upstate New York village after exchanging fire with a man suspected of killing four people and wounding two others.

State police Superintendent Joseph D'Amico says SWAT teams and other officers were fired on from an abandoned building in Herkimer early Wednesday afternoon while looking for 64-year-old Kurt Myers.

Police say Myers' rampage started with a fire in his apartment in the nearby village of Mohawk at about 9:30 a.m. Wednesday. They say he then used a shotgun shot to shoot four people, two fatally, at a barbershop around the corner before killing two more at a Herkimer oil change and car wash business.

About 1:30 p.m., a flurry of gunfire was heard near where police had narrowed their search.

Myles Smith, who lives nearby, tells The Associated Press by cellphone he's heard police trying to talk Meyers into coming out of another building. He says there are snipers on the roof.

At a 5 p.m. press conference held at a police garage, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo thanked first responders, calling them a, "bright light," in a, "bleak situation."

"We send our thoughts and our prayers to the victims and their families," Cuomo said, calling the shootings a, "senseless horror."

Governor Cuomo arrived in Herkimer about 10 minutes after multiple gunshots were heard in a section of Herkimer where police are looking for the man suspected of killing two people in Herkimer and killing two others in neighboring Mohawk earlier in the day.

Two other people were wounded in the shooting at a Mohawk barber shop. Two people were fatally shot at a car wash and oil change business.

Malone, the police chief for Herkimer and Mohawk, says authorities found guns and ammunition were found inside Meyers' apartment after emergency crews were sent to a fire there Wednesday morning.

Soon after, police say two people were fatally shot and two others wounded at John's Barber Shop, around the corner from the apartment. Officials say the second shooting happened about a mile away in Herkimer, where two people were killed at Gaffey's Fast Lube and Car Wash.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

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