OSAKA (Kyodo) An Osaka city employee gunned down three people in a bar Tuesday evening in Habikino, Osaka Prefecture, before committing suicide, police said.

The shooter was identified as Yasuhisa Sugiura, 49. The three victims in the 8 p.m. carnage included Tatsuya Fukui, 23, a part-time employee at the bar, and Yoshiko Tanaka, 66, Sugiura's mother-in-law, the police said.

Hiroto Uehara, 49, the owner of the bar, died later.

According to witnesses, Sugiura and his mother-in-law were at the bar to talk about he and her daughter getting a divorce. In the middle of the discussion, Sugiura became excited and left. Returning with a shotgun, he shot Tanaka and the two others. Sugiura then shot himself outside the bar.

Several months earlier, Sugiura's mother-in-law, a former member of the municipal assembly in Habikino, told an acquaintance that her daughter had a troubled marriage, according to the police.

The bar is in a residential area about 3 km south of Eganosho Station.