Kansas City, Missouri - An Ethiopian man who shot two co-workers at a parking lot before turning the gun on himself left a bitter letter addressed to his family and "all Ethiopians and all black races", complaining of a history of racist treatment.
Negusse Zeleke, a shuttle bus driver at The Parking Spot near Kansas City International Airport, shot the workers and himself on Saturday. Zeleke and driver Michael Scott died.
A dispatcher, Traci Riehle, was critically injured, but managed to drive one of the shuttles to an airport terminal for help. She remained hospitalised on Monday.
The three-page, typewritten note signed by Zeleke, 37, was dated November 5. It was released on Monday by the Kansas City Police Department.
In the letter, Zeleke, who arrived in the United States in 1989, complained of treatment by what he called "black blood sucker supreme white people".
"We Africans are one continent and one people," the letter said. "The political problems today we faced were created not by us, but they have been created by previous colonies or today's white supremacists' evil act. They divided you using different methods: by your language, religion, race, tribes et cetera, to make you down, to suck your blood," Zeleke wrote.
The letter detailed his difficulty in maintaining employment through the years, being laid off from a hotel job in San Francisco, and working as a taxi driver, parking attendant, warehouse worker, cashier and nursing assistant.
It still remained unclear what led Zeleke to the shootings. The co-workers he shot were white.
Company officials said Zeleke had an unblemished work record and don't know what led to the incident, a spokesperson said.
Zeleke had a wife and two children. In Ethiopia, Zeleke had been a police officer, the company said. - Sapa-AP