A gunman who killed 12 people after opening fire on city workers in Virginia Beach on Friday has been named by police as DeWayne Craddock.

The gunman, a “disgruntled” public utility employee, opened fire with a handgun and left several people injured before being fatally shot by police.

Virginia Beach Police Chief James Cervera said the suspect was armed with a .45-caliber pistol equipped with a “sound suppressor” device and “extended” ammunition magazines he used to reload repeatedly during the attack.

Virginia Beach mayor Bobby Dyer described the incident as “the most devastating day in the history of Virginia Beach.”

Authorities used a news conference on Saturday to focus on the victims – 11 municipal workers and one contractor. 

They were Laquita Brown, Tara Gallagher, Mary Louise Gayle, Alexander Gusev, Katherine Nixon, Richard Nettleton, Christopher Kelly Rapp, Ryan Keith Cox, Joshua Hardy, Michelle Langer, Robert Williams and Herbert Snelling.

Officials say they will name Craddock only once, then will not refer to him again.

The first victim was shot in a vehicle outside the public works and utilities building at the city municipal centre before the suspect entered that building and “immediately and indiscriminately fired upon all the victims,” Cervera said.

Survivors told of pandemonium and fear that erupted as gunshots rang out, with workers scurrying frantically for cover.

Megan Banton, a public utilities worker, told television station WAVY-TV: “We just heard people yelling and screaming to get down,” recalling that she and co-workers barricaded themselves in their office.

“We put the desk up against the door because we didn’t know if they were coming in. We were just hoping that it would be over soon, and then we heard the cops yelling up the steps.”   

The chief said the suspect engaged in a “long-term gun battle” with four police officers who confronted him inside, preventing the gunman from “committing more carnage in that building.”

One officer was wounded in the shootout, but his bullet-proof vest saved his life, Cervera said. 

He added that the suspect was a longtime public utilities employee, and described him as “disgruntled,” but declined to say more about what may have precipitated the attack.

“We have more questions than we really have answers,” he told reporters on Friday.

The bloodshed unfolded at a building complex with capacity for 400 employees which lies several miles inland from the town’s popular seashore, situated on the Atlantic coast at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.

The shooting is the deadliest instance of U.S. gun violence since November 2018, when a dozen people were killed at a restaurant in Los Angeles by a gunman who then killed himself.

It is also believed to be the deadliest act of workplace gun violence in the United States since February, when a factory worker shot five colleagues to death in Aurora, Illinois, just after he was let go from his job.

“This is the most devastating day in the history of Virginia Beach,” Mayor Bobby Dyer said at a news conference with the police chief. “The people involved are our friends, co-workers, neighbours, colleagues.”

Arriving in town a short time after the shooting, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam said: “This is just a horrific day.”

“Our hearts ache for victims of the senseless violence that has been inflicted on the community,” he told a news conference hours later.

In Washington, a White House spokesman said President Donald Trump had been briefed on the shooting and “continues to monitor the situation.”