KIRKWOOD — Yellow tape. White flowers. Red eyes.

The telling colors faded into a gray gloom Friday over a community stunned after an enraged citizen turned his anger into a spray of bullets at City Hall that killed five and left the mayor fighting for life.

Cori Karasuik of Town and County was among a slow stream of mourners offering bouquets outside.

"I wanted the people involved to know that the whole city is grieving for them and our hearts are broken," Karasuik said.

The flowers and prayers, the condolences and hugs, were perhaps small comfort after Thursday's night's massacre. But it was a beginning.

"The business of the city will continue, and we will recover, but we will never be the same," Deputy Mayor Tim Griffin said in a news conference Friday. He stood outside the building where two fellow members of the City Council, the public works director, a police officer and the attacker all died; a second officer was killed a short distance away.

"The healing process starts now," Griffin added.

Grief — and the media spotlight — are not new to Kirkwood. The two city officers were lost as Chief Jack Plummer's department was still healing from the slaying of Sgt. William McEntee in 2005.

"We've all been here before, unfortunately, and we will move past this," Plummer said Friday. "There's an old phrase: 'You don't get more than you can handle.' That's being tested, but we'll get through it. We ask for your help."

He and other officials addressed a city in shock. A steady trickle of details about the massacre did little to ease residents.

On Thursday night, Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton, 52, a Kirkwood resident with a history of berating officials at council meetings, parked his van — an old blue ambulance — near City Hall. He started the killing with police Sgt. William Biggs in a parking lot across the street from City Hall. Thornton shot Biggs in the head with a large-caliber revolver, then reinforced himself with the officer's .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol.

Bursting into the council chamber, Thornton then shot and killed Officer Tom Ballman. As far as officials can tell, neither officer had time to draw his gun.

Then Thornton turned to the city officials he felt had wronged him.

"They never had a chance," said Will Joyce, a Kirkwood attorney who was sitting in the back of the meeting room Thursday night. "The gunshots never really stopped. He just kept shooting."

Firing both weapons, Thornton killed Councilwoman Connie Karr, Councilman Michael H.T. Lynch and Public Works Director Ken Yost.

Mayor Mike Swoboda, shot in the head, was in critical condition after surgery Friday at St. John's Mercy Medical Center in Creve Coeur. A Suburban Journals newspaper reporter, Todd Smith, was in satisfactory condition with a wound to the hand.

The city attorney managed to fend off Thornton by throwing chairs. Alerted by an alarm from Biggs' belt radio and directed by the sound of shots, more police rushed into the council room and shot Thornton dead.

The gunman had left a short, unsigned note at home that offered no real explanation. "The truth will win in the end," it said.

Gerald Thornton said Friday that his brother believed he was "going to war" with a city that did not respect his rights.

In the last decade, disputes arose over an asphalt business Charles Thornton ran from his home. City officials said he didn't have the right licenses. They ticketed his vehicles. He once claimed he received more than 150 citations, costing him thousands of dollars.

Thornton began showing up at council meetings, railing against city officials and the mayor in particular.

He was twice convicted of disorderly conduct at meetings in 2006 after causing disruptions. He had refused to leave until police — including Ballman — took him away in handcuffs. Thornton sued to be allowed unfettered comments at the meetings, invoking the First Amendment, but a federal judge rejected his arguments Jan. 28.

Even those who knew Thornton well, who remembered a nice guy with an easy smile, said he had become irrational about his problems with the city.

"I tried to talk to him," said Joe Cole, 89, who had known Thornton since childhood. "But the hate is worst. Once you get it into your system, you're gone. … Everybody said he lost his brain. No, hate got into him. He couldn't stop the hate."

The result was an act of violence that shook the community.

"This is not Kirkwood as we know Kirkwood," said Marjorie B. Schramm, mayor of the suburb from 1992 to 2000 and a councilwoman before that. "It's a tragedy. I hope that people can heal and that Kirkwood can go back to being the community it was."

The killings left a huge void and uncertainty at City Hall. Under the city charter, the mayor's duties fall to Griffin. It also outlines steps for filling vacant council positions.

For now, elections are scheduled April 8. Mayor Swoboda could not seek re-election due to term limits. Karr, who died, was scheduled to face Councilman Arthur McDonnell for the post.

There is a process under state law for elections to be postponed because of disasters, including those "man made." The local election authority must first petition a panel of appellate court judges.

St. Louis County Election Board Chairman John J. Diehl Jr. declined Friday to discuss whether he would seek to delay Kirkwood's election, or whether Karr's name would be on the ballot.

"It's somewhat uncharted territory," Diehl said.

Joe Mahr, Stephen Deere, Steve Giegerich, Robert Patrick and Jake Wagman of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

hratcliffe@post-dispatch.com | 314-621-5804