Wash. Couple Survive Massacre

VANCOUVER, Wash. - A Vancouver couple "pretended to be dead" and survived the attack by a gunman who killed at least 34 people in Australia, a family friend said today.

Dennis Olson was slightly wounded in the shooting at Port Arthur, Australia. His wife, Mary, was not injured, one of her co-workers told The Vancouver Columbian.

A man with a history of mental problems, 29-year-old Martin Bryant, was arrested after the shootings on the island of Tasmania.

Dennis Olson called his former wife, who asked not to be identified, to let her know he was all right. She relayed the message to Kris' Hallmark Shop at Vancouver Mall, where Mary Olson, 49, works.

The couple were sitting in a cafe when the gunman opened fire, said co-worker Debbie Burton.

"This man just walked in and was determined to kill everyone," said Burton, who spoke with Olson's former wife. "Dennis and Mary pretended to be dead. Anybody who moved or spoke or was sitting in a chair, he shot them.

"The man next to Dennis said, `Oh good, he's gone,' and he shot him," Burton said.

Olson sustained minor injuries and was released after treatment at the Royal Hobart Hospital.

"Dennis told his ex-wife that he wasn't actually shot. He was hit by fragments in the side of his head," Burton said.

Armed with a semiautomatic rifle, the gunman methodically shot tourists yesterday at the Port Arthur prison historic site before retreating to a nearby bed and breakfast, which was owned by friends of his late father.

After a 12-hour standoff, the gunman, who had taken three hostages, set fire to the inn and was driven out by the flames.

"His clothing was on fire, and he started taking his clothing off," police Superintendent Bob Fielding said.

The suspect apparently set fire to the building.Two bodies were found in the burned rubble.

The old Port Arthur prison colony is on the Tasman Peninsula, connected to Tasmania's mainland by one road on a narrow isthmus. Police closed off the road into Port Arthur, the landing site of some of the toughest convicts England sent into Australian exile in the 1800s.

Yesterday afternoon, the blond gunman drove up to the prison tourist site in a Volvo hatchback with a surfboard strapped on top and talked casually with some of the 500 people outside, police said.

Witnesses said the gunman muttered racially tinged remarks before walking toward the Broad Arrow Cafe, where he pulled a high-powered rifle from a tennis bag and began shooting.

The man then walked into the cafe and started shooting.

"He wasn't going bang-bang-bang-bang - it was `bang' and then he'd pick someone else out and line them up and shoot them," witness Phillip Milburn told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

After the shootings in the cafe, the killer walked outside and turned his rifle on tourists near a bus, killing four people, including the driver.

He kidnapped an Australian man at a gas station and stole a car to drive three miles to the bed-and-breakfast cottage owned by David and Sally Martin, a couple in their 60s.

Police said 25 of the people killed yesterday were Australians.

One Melbourne woman said she survived by hiding under a table.

"There were people just sitting there in their chairs where they'd been eating - dead," she said. "There was a weird sort of calm, as if no one could believe what they were seeing."

Olson, in his mid-50s, is a longtime employee of Vancouver Welding Supply.

"I knew he was going to be in Tasmania," said Lyle Evanson, his boss and owner of the company. "I wondered if he was there, but I figured, what are the chances it would involve someone I know? Then the 11 p.m. news reported his name.

"He and his wife had saved for several years," Evanson said. "They wanted to take a month off to fulfill a lifelong dream."

Seattle Times staff reporter Susan Gilmore contributed to this report.