APPOMATTOX, Va. — A man suspected of killing eight people before disappearing into Virginia woods surrendered at sunrise today, and bomb teams searched a house they said he may have rigged with explosives.

Christopher Bryan Speight, 39, was wearing a bulletproof vest but had no weapons when he turned himself in to police at 7:10 a.m., Sheriff O. Wilson Staples said. Authorities say at one point he fired at a state police helicopter, rupturing its gas tank and forcing it to land, but no one on board was hurt.

Staples said this morning that Speight co-owned a home where three bodies were found inside and four outside. The eighth victim, who was found barely alive on the road just outside the house, died at the hospital.

Authorities have not revealed a motive for the shooting or said how Speight was related to the victims. Police spokeswoman Corrine Geller would not say what Speight said when he turned himself in.

Staples said bomb technicians and bomb-sniffing dogs were sent to the house because authorities believed explosive devices may have been planted in and around it.

"This is a horrific tragedy," Geller said at a news conference today. "It's definitely one of the worst mass killings in Virginia, probably since the Virginia Tech tragedy in April of 2007."