Police hunt for Homeland Security officer after shootings at two Maryland shopping centers

Shootings at two shopping centers in Washington suburbs left one person dead and three wounded on Friday, although it was unknown if the incidents were related, police said.

Police sought Eulalio Sevilla Tordil, 62, a police officer with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security who they identified as a person of interest in the shootings. He also is suspected of killing his wife and shooting a bystander on Thursday in Beltsville, Maryland, in neighboring Prince George's County.

He has threatened to commit "suicide by cop," police said.

With no suspects in custody, authorities locked down 14 schools and all of the county's recreational facilities as a precaution.

Police said they were still unsure whether Friday's incidents were related and if either was connected to Thursday's slaying.

A confrontation in a parking lot led to the first shooting on Friday at Westfield Montgomery Mall in affluent Bethesda, Maryland, where two men and a woman were hit by gunfire and taken to a hospital, police said. They were in critical condition.

The incident was originally reported as an assault shortly after 11 a.m.

Two of the wounded were bystanders who came to the aid of the first victim, said Assistant Chief Darryl McSwain of Montgomery County police.

No suspect was in custody but "we are looking at a person of interest," McSwain told a news conference in the pouring rain.

A second shooting about half an hour later killed a woman at the Aspen Hill Shopping Center in Silver Spring, some 8 miles (13 km) away, Montgomery County police said on Twitter.

Bethesda and Silver Spring are suburbs just north of Washington in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Tordil is expected of fatally shooting his wife as she waited the parking lot of High Point High School in Beltsville to pick up her children. A bystander was wounded.

(Reporting by Suzannah Gonzales, Ian Simpson, Barbara Goldberg and Gina Cherelus; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Bill Trott)