An alleged anti-Semite who fatally shot three people at a Jewish centre and retirement home in Kansas will be prosecuted for hate crimes, police say.
Frazier Glenn Cross, 73, now in custody, is a former Ku Klux Klan leader with a history of anti-Semitism, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups in the United States.
He reportedly yelled "Heil Hitler" as police escorted him away on Sunday after the shooting in Overland Park, outside Kansas City.
"We have unquestionably determined that this was a hate crime," Overland Park police chief John Douglass told a press conference on Monday.
Under federal law, prosecutors can seek life in prison for those convicted of murder if they are found to have been motivated by racial or religious hatred.
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"We are in a very good place" to prosecute Cross for hate crimes, said Barry Grissom, US attorney for the district of Kansas, adding that his office would be making its case to a grand jury "in the not too distant future".
The shooting began at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City early on Sunday afternoon as youths auditioned for a play, then continued at the nearby Village Shalom assisted living centre.
Douglass identified the dead as a 69-year-old and his 14-year-old grandson at the community centre, and a 53-year-old who was visiting her mother at the assisted living centre.
In Washington, President Barack Obama said religious violence had no place in US society, as he attended an Easter prayer breakfast at the White House.
