A Wisconsin man who had been accused of domestic violence and slashing his wife's tyres took a gun into the spa where she worked Sunday and shot seven women, three fatally, before killing himself, a police chief said.

The shootings set off a confusing, six-hour search for the gunman that locked down a nearby mall, a country club adjacent to the spa and the hospital where the survivors were taken. The search froze activity in a commercial area in Brookfield, a middle-to-upper class community west of Milwaukee, for much of the day. Ultimately, he was found dead in the spa.

The man they identified as the suspect, Radcliffe Franklin Haughton, 45, of Brown Deer, had a restraining order against him. Haughton grew up in Wheeling and Northbrook, according to his father.