A gunman opened fire in the lobby of a downtown Vancouver retirement community Thursday afternoon, police said, killing one person and injuring two more, then barricaded himself in an apartment for more than two hours before police took him into custody.

Vancouver police said Robert E. Breck, 80, was booked in the Clark County Jail on one count of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder.

According to Vancouver Police spokeswoman Kim Kapp, Breck shot three people in the lobby of the Smith Tower, at 515 Washington Street. Vancouver police did not identify the victims by name but said two female victims were taken to the hospital for medical treatment, and a male victim died.

The incident was reported around 2 p.m., and Breck barricaded himself in an apartment on the 13th floor after the shooting, officials said. Police and crisis negotiation team members began communicating with Breck, while other officers and SWAT team members evacuated residents from the building, and those people rode a bus to nearby Vancouver City Hall.

Residents who weren’t able to leave the building were advised to shelter in place, and some huddled on their balconies as police negotiated with the man for more than two hours. Throughout the negotiation, a police drone hovered near the 13th floor, and officials warned of possible gunfire from the window. Shortly before 7 p,m., Vancouver police reported that all residents had been cleared to return to their apartments.

According to public records, Breck had previously lived in the Portland metro area, including in Clackamas, Milwaukie and Southeast Portland. He started his own construction business in Clark County in 1993, records show, but filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2001. Breck had no prior criminal record in Oregon or Washington, except for traffic infractions in 1992 and 2003, both of which were dismissed.

Austin Studebaker, who works in a building down the street from the Smith Tower, said he and his cousin were shopping at the nearby Plaid Pantry when he started to see police swarm into the building. Within five minutes, he saw four police officers carrying out a victim who appeared to have been shot in the chest.

“There was a pretty clear large red mark on the person’s chest,” he said.

“No one heard any gunshots, which is the strangest part,” Studebaker said. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire life.”

Iva Gjerde, 94, who lives on the 13th floor of Smith Tower, said by phone that she had just gotten back into her apartment about 5:15 p.m. after police had evacuated tenants from the building.

Gjerde said she had first noticed SWAT-team-like officers carrying rifles in the hallway of the building. Later, she said, an officer knocked on her apartment door.

"He just took me by the arm and led me downstairs,'' she said. "I didn't know what to think. It was scarier than heck.''

At first, she and other residents were told to wait in the recreation room in the building, she said. A short time later, she said, they were then escorted to sit in a bus nearby. She said she still doesn’t know exactly what happened because she’d been sitting in a bus for more than an hour.

She said she didn’t hear any gunshots from her 13th-floor apartment. She’s lived in the building for 22 years, and she knew Breck.

“He was my neighbor,” Gjerde said. “As far as I knew, he was friendly and nice. There was never a problem with him at all.”

Another building resident, Daniel Hatosky, said several residents needed help getting out of the building. Hatosky, 89, has one leg amputated and uses an electric wheelchair. He said police initially told him not to leave his second-floor apartment, but a short time later, they evacuated him and others. Hatosky said he didn’t hear any gunshots or see the suspect.

A fire department chaplain also responded to the scene and offered food, including ginger cookies, to the evacuated tenants waiting on the bus, Hatosky said.

Police activity related to the shooting closed streets from Esther to Main and from Fifth to Seventh.

Vancouver Police, Washington State troopers, and members of the Clark County Sheriff’s Office and the Portland Police Bureau were on scene. Police urged people to avoid the area.

Vancouver City Hall was briefly on lockdown. It reopened to the public around 4:15 p.m.

Michael Palensky, the owner of Couve Cycle, a bike shop around the corner from Smith Tower, said he was leaving for the day when he encountered a wall of police and fire department vehicles blocking the street.

“I was just below Smith Tower when they all started swarming it,” he said. “I had to back out of the street to get out of there.”

He said there were 20 to 30 police vehicles on the scene with more arriving, including tactical teams, even half an hour after the incident was first reported.

The incident affected C-TRAN.

The Vine and Route 71 were detoured. The Turtle Place station was closed, and Route 71 wasn’t serving stops south of 8th Street.

Vancouver Mayor Anne McEnerny-Ogle released a statement saying, “While we are still learning about what happened surrounding the shooting incident this afternoon in downtown Vancouver, our hearts go out to the victims and their families as they deal with this tragedy. I commend our police officers, fire and EMS personnel who quickly responded to the scene. I have the utmost confidence in our officers as they work to resolve the situation.”

The Smith Tower website describes the apartment building as a retirement community for people age 62 and older with 170 studio and one-bedroom apartments and views of the Columbia River and the Cascade foothills. The owner of Smith Towers is listed on the website as Mid-Columbia Manor Inc., a nonprofit corporation of local labor unions.

A person answered the phone for Smith Tower but said she had been told not to speak to reporters.

This story will be updated.

—Jayati Ramakrishnan; 503-221-4320; jramakrishnan@oregonian.com; @JRamakrishnanOR

Reporters Elliot Njus, Maxine Bernstein, Shane Dixon Kavanaugh and Emily Goodykoontz contributed to this report.

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