Harry Montgomery was a 68-year-old White man from Mohawk, New York, who walked into an ordinary Wednesday morning on March 13, 2013 and never walked out. In the small, close-knit streets along the Mohawk River, he was known as “Monty” to family and friends, a longtime working man and volunteer who had built a life measured in steady routines—until violence tore through town without warning.
That morning, investigators said the rampage began with a fire set at the shooter’s apartment in Mohawk. Minutes later, the gunman drove a short distance to John’s Barber Shop and opened fire with a shotgun, striking four people inside. Montgomery was killed there, in a place meant for conversation and haircuts and the comfort of familiar faces. The barbershop owner, John Seymour, and another customer, Dan Haslauer, were critically wounded in the same burst of gunfire.
The shooting didn’t end in Mohawk. Police said the gunman crossed into nearby Herkimer and attacked a second business, where two more men were shot and killed—Thomas Stefka and Michael Renshaw—before the shooter fled again. By late morning, the villages were locked down, schools were closed, and residents sheltered indoors while law enforcement flooded the area, searching for a man they believed had no rational motive and nothing left to lose.
Authorities identified the suspect as Kurt Myers, a 64-year-old local resident. Reports described him as a loner, and officials said his known criminal history was limited—often cited as an old drunken-driving arrest—making the day’s bloodshed feel even more inexplicable to neighbors who barely knew him. Investigators also said weapons and ammunition were found in connection with his residence after the fire.
The manhunt ended not with an arrest, but with a prolonged standoff that stretched overnight inside an abandoned building in Herkimer. After nearly twenty hours, police and tactical teams moved in; during the final confrontation, Myers shot and killed a police K-9 and then was shot and killed by law enforcement. With the suspected shooter dead at the scene, there was no trial to answer the questions that hung over the river valley—only the aftermath, the funerals, and the echo of a morning that began like any other and ended with four families shattered, including Montgomery’s.
