Briton among the dead as disco gunman kills five

A GUNMAN was on the run last night after shooting dead five people including a 37-year-old British woman near the border between Germany and France.

The incident began when a man fired into a crowd at a disco, killing the manager and a customer in Dillingen, west of Saarbruecken, about 15 miles from the French border early yesterday. He then fled to the house of the British woman, Joey Fisne, a bar worker originally from Jamaica. He shot her and her husband dead and injured her daughter. His fifth victim was a man whose car he tried to hijack as he escaped.

Ms Fisne was shot and killed while she slept with her family, her French husband, Robert, 41, and their 11-year-old daughter. Police said the girl's injuries were not life-threatening.

The bloodbath began when the gunman fired into a crowd of about 40 people at about 4:40am at the disco called Xanadu. The manager, Roland Dekow, 41, and a guest were killed and four others were wounded.

The gunman then went to a flat about 200 metres away where Ms Fisne and her family lived. Police said the suspect knew the couple but added that this was not unusual in a town with a population 25,000. "The couple were asleep in their ground-floor flat when he burst in and shot them."

The man then fled towards the French town of Sierck-les-Bains in his car, but crashed and tried to hijack another vehicle. He killed the driver of one car who refused to hand it over and then stopped a second vehicle, a Peugeot 106 driven by a woman, and continued his flight.

Police said they followed the man to an empty army barracks in Sierck- les-Bains and surrounded it. Shots were reported but police started a manhunt after realising he was not in the building.

Roadblocks have been set up and a helicopter has been deployed in the hunt for the man. Police named him as Gunter Hermann Ewen, 37, and said he was armed with a revolver.