State soldier fatally shot in Virginia capital

A gunman has shot a Virginia trooper to death in the state capital before being taken down by other soldiers.

Police say the state trooper was shot at a busy bus terminal in Richmond before a couple of fellow soldiers gunned down the armed man.

Two civilians, both women, were also shot but were expected to recover.

The trooper, identified as Chad P. Dermyer, died Thursday after being shot multiple times, officials said.

Virginia State Police Superintendent Col. Steven Flaherty said investigators were looking into what sparked the shootout.

Dermyer had been participating with about a dozen other troopers in a training exercise at the bus station when a brief encounter with the gunman quickly turned violent, he said.

The gunman’s identity was being withheld until his family could be notified.

A small army of law enforcement officers flooded to the scene of the attack.

Back in January, the Virginia Center for Public Safety said since former president John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, more Americans have been killed as a result of gun violence than all US wars.

From the Revolutionary War through December 2014, 1.2 million Americans have died in military conflicts, according to PolitiFact citing the Congressional Research Service.

This is while the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has put the total number of domestic gun deaths at 1.5 million between 1968 and 2014.

According to the CDC, firearms are the cause of death for more than 33,000 people in the United States every year, a number that includes accidental discharge, murder and suicides.