Three people died yesterday and several others were wounded during shootings at a church and a missionary center in the U.S. state of Colorado.

A black-clad gunman killed two staff members and wounded two others after being turned away from the Youth with a Mission by a missionary training center in suburban Arvada, outside Denver.

The organization was founded in 1960 and has more than 1,000 branch offices in 149 countries, according to its Web site. The Arvada branch host dozens of people from around the world training them as Christian missionaries.

The shooting happened about 12:30 a.m., according to witnesses who said that a gunman in his 20s wearing a dark jacket and a dark skullcap spoke to several members, asking to spend the night. After a 30-minute discussion, he was turned away. When a staff member asked for help from others to usher him out, he shot a woman and a man to death and wounded two other staff members. One of them is in serious condition. The gunman disappeared into the night being able to elude a massive search.

The other incidents happened almost 12 hours later in Colorado Springs, 70 miles away from the place of the first incident. A gunman invaded the grounds of the New Life Church, a 14,000-member institution founded by the Rev. Ted Haggard, fired last year after a former male prostitute alleged he had a three-year cash-for-sex relationship with him. Without being provoked, the gunman opened fire in a parking lot and shot four people, one of them fatally. According to church official, there were almost 7,000 worshipers inside the church when the shooting started.

Richard Myers, Colorado Springs chief of police, said that the gunman ran into the 10,000-seat church after the shooting, being killed by an armed church security guard, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

"What I experienced from my window was surreal. My heart is broken today for the people who lost their lives," said the pastor of the New Life Church, the Rev. Brady Boyd at an evening news conference outside the church.

The police are investigating whether the two incidents are related, but Don Wick, the Arvada police chief, said he had reason to believe that the two incidents were connected, though he did not comment why, the Associated Press reported.

Peter Warren, director of the training center in Arvada revealed that Tiffany Johnson, 26, of Minnesota, the director of hospitability for the training site had been killed, as well as Philip Crouse, 24, of Alaska. Two other men were seriously wounded, Charlie Blanch, 22, and Dan Griebenow, 24.