‘John the Barber’ Played Dead During Herkimer Shootings

The barber who survived last month's fatal shooting rampage in Mohawk told the Associated Press Wednesday that he played dead while the gunman shot up his shop, even as one of the victims fell on him.

John Seymour recounted how gunman Kurt Myers walked into his barbershop in Mohawk on March 13 just as he was pulling the cloth from a customer in the barber chair. Myers asked Seymour if he remembered him, pulled up his shotgun that Seymour had thought was an umbrella and began firing.

Seymour yelled to his customers that Myers had a gun. Myers started shooting, hitting Seymour and three of his customers.

Seymour and Dan Haslauer survived, but Michael Ransear and Harry Montgomery, Sr., were killed.

Myers then drove to neighboring Herkimer, where he fatally shot two men in another business. Myers died in a shootout with police the next morning inside an abandoned Herkimer hotel.

Seymour is recovering at home with wounds to his left wrist and back. Though his scissoring wrist is still healing, he said he wants to get back to being a barber.