A US man has been arrested in connection with three suburban Washington DC shootings. Eulalio Tordil went on a deadly shooting rampage on Thursday (5 May) night that left three people dead, including his estranged wife, and two others wounded.

The first shooting took place outside a shopping mall in Bethesda, about 15 miles northwest of the nation's capital. Thirty minutes later, the 62-year-old federal protection officer opened fire outside a grocery store in nearby Silver Spring, where he shot and killed a woman Sky News reports.

Police in Prince George's County said Tordil was stalking his wife, 44-year-old Gladys Tordil. He finally caught up with her at their children's Beltsville's High Point High School where he shot her dead.

Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said the suspect had been under surveillance for about an hour as he walked from store to store at the shopping centre. "Our fear was he was armed and since he had already shot four people today we certainly didn't want to have any other bloodshed," Manger told The Washington Post.

14 schools were temporarily placed on lockdown after the shootings. Tordil, who had earlier threatened to commit suicide by police fire, was taken into custody on Friday afternoon, police in Maryland confirmed. The other victims have not been named.