los ANGELES -- A gunman who fired at cars and shouted "kill me" and "I'm gonna die!" was shot to death Friday by police after wounding a driver in the heart of Hollywood, authorities and a witness reported.
The unidentified man was pronounced dead at the scene. No officers were hurt, Los Angeles police Officer Cleon Joseph said.
Police had few details. However, witness Oscar Herrera told KABC-TV that he saw the gunman walking down the middle of Vine Street near Sunset Boulevard, firing at least nine shots into the air and at passing cars while shouting "Kill me!" and "I'm gonna die!"
"People were running all over," Herrera said. "People was ducking."
The 40-year-old male driver of a Mercedes-Benz was wounded in his upper body and taken to a hospital in unknown condition. A truck and another car were struck with bullets.
The gunman eventually ran out of bullets and pulled a knife before a policeman shot four or five times at the attacker, Herrera said.
Dave Pepper told KCAL-TV that he was in his car when the gunman attacked him.
"This guy came running across the street and he put the gun right up to this window," Pepper said as he sat in the car. "Why he didn't pull the trigger I don't know ... I thought maybe he was out of bullets."
Investigators were trying to determine a motive for the attack. The area was cordoned off, snarling traffic in the heart of Hollywood, as the gunman's body remained in the street under a white sheet for more than an hour after the attack.
UPDATE -- Diana Suarez, a 30-year-old motion graphics designer, was on her way to work this morning when she saw something out of the ordinary.
She told The Huffington Post that while she was stopped at the red light on Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street, a car in the left-turn lane made a hard right and cut through three lanes of the intersection. Thinking it was nothing more than an aggressive motorist, Suarez was horrified to see the reason for the dangerous driving move: a man was strolling down the middle of Vine Street, waving a gun in the air.
"He looked right at me," remembered Suarez. Luckily there was just enough room between her car, in the middle lane, and a truck in the right lane for her to squeeze through and escape. "I just peeled out, turned into the Chase bank and climbed over the wall until the chaos was over," Suarez recalled. A colleague from her office at Buzz Media talked her through the incident on her cellphone, and others from her work came by later to pick her up.
"I really couldn't believe that so many cars just stayed there" when the gunman was shooting, said Suarez. "There really was just nowhere to go because all the cars were piling up."
According to both Suarez and other reports on Twitter, the gunman seemed to be firing randomly, although Suarez observed that "he had plenty of opportunity to shoot anyone because we were all stuck there."
Suarez described him as a thin caucasian man wearing baggy pants and a white undershirt tanktop. She also thinks he may have been wearing a black baseball cap.
This video by Rich Kingston, shot from a nearby highrise building, captures the death of the gunman.
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