Two Dead in Nasa Hostage Drama

As America held a day of mourning for victims of the Virginia Tech massacre, a fresh gun tragedy was played out yesterday in Texas in which a gunman killed a hostage at Nasa's Johnson space centre before killing himself.

Described as being in his 50s, the man barricaded himself into the second floor of a Nasa office block in Houston, taking two hostages. Workers were evacuated and police Swat teams were sent in. But before communication could be opened, shooting broke out - leaving one of the hostages and the gunman dead; the second hostage escaped with minor injuries.

The drama lasted three hours, though police said the hostage was probably killed soon after he was taken captive.

According to reports, the gunman worked for Jacobs Engineering, a subcontractor employed by Nasa. But police were unable to determine any motive.

The shooting heightened a state of jitters throughout the US which had been much in evidence in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting on Monday.

Across America, incidents have broken out in which public buildings have been evacuated as a result of false alarms and gun scares.

On the west coast, in San Francisco, up to 400 students were hurried out of classes as a result of an internet posting which connected the school to Virginia Tech. The school authorities were taking no chances and evacuated.

Eight buildings at the University of Minnesota were evacuated on Wednesday after a bomb threat, and a middle school in Columbia, Missouri, was shut down after gunfire was heard between two passing cars.

Schools, universities and other public institutions have been on increased alert, partly as a result of a general sense of nervousness, and partly in the knowledge that such tragedies can provoke copycat incidents.

The confluence of the eighth anniversary of the Columbine shootings added further to apprehensions.

The Nasa shooting was in building 44 of the 650-hectare (1,600-acre) space centre campus, an engineering block used in the tracking of space shuttles. The campus is where astronauts are trained and mission control is housed.