Phone threat interrupts church memorial service

Worshippers hurriedly left a church in Newtown on Sunday when someone phoned in a threat. The call interrupted a crowded Mass at which parishioners were remembering the 20 children and six adults who were massacred at a nearby elementary school.

Police said later that nothing dangerous was found.

The threat touched off a large police response days after the worst massacre of school-age children in US history.

Halfway through the noon service at the St. Rose of Lima Church, the priest stopped and said: "Please, everybody leave. There is a threat," said worshipper Anna Wood of Oxford, Connecticut.

At least a dozen police officers wearing camouflage gear and carrying guns soon arrived. An Associated Press photographer saw police leave carrying something in a red tarpaulin. Guns drawn, they searched the church and adjacent buildings.

Deborah Metz, a Trumbull police officer on the scene, gave the all-clear after about an hour. Police said the church would be on lockdown for the rest of the day.

Police hold man who fired 50 shots in mall

A man who fired about 50 shots in the parking lot of a crowded Southern California shopping mall, sending shoppers sprinting for safety, was cooperative when officers took him into custody, authorities said on Sunday.

Witnesses said people ran, screaming and ducking for cover, when Marcos Gurrola, 42, fired into the air and onto the ground on Saturday afternoon near the Macy's department store at the open-air Fashion Island mall in Newport Beach.

He paused to reload several times, police said.

Gurrola put the gun down and offered no resistance when bicycle officers arrested him around 4:30 pm, said Lieutenant John Lewis.

"He just gave up," Lewis said.

Gurrola, of Garden Grove, was charged with shooting at an inhabited dwelling. He was being held on Sunday on $250,000 bail. Police recovered a handgun and ammunition.

Man arrested after alledgedly menacing wife

A northern Indiana police chief said on Sunday he believes a man arrested after allegedly threatening to "kill as many people as he could" at a school was bluffing when he made the ominous remark during a heated argument with his wife.

Interim Cedar Lake Police Chief Jerry Smith said Von I. Meyer, 60, was arguing early on Friday with his wife and initially threatened to set her on fire while she was sleeping at their home.

Meyer, who was arrested on Saturday on seven felony charges, told his wife he would kill her "at the school" and "would kill as many people as he could before police could stop him", Smith said.

- AP