AURORA, Ill. — A 15-year employee being fired from a suburban Chicago manufacturing company started shooting Friday, killing five co-workers and wounding five police officers before he was killed by police, authorities said.
Aurora, Ill., Police Chief Kristen Ziman said 45-year-old Gary Martin “was being terminated” before he started shooting at the Henry Pratt Co. — which makes valves for industrial purposes — in the city about 40 miles west of Chicago.
She told a news conference that in addition to the five employees killed, a sixth worker was taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life threatening. A sixth police officer suffered a knee injury while officers were searching the building.
Ziman said officers arrived within four minutes of receiving reports of the shooting and were fired upon as soon as they entered the 29,000-square-foot manufacturing warehouse.
Police said they did not know the gunman’s motive.
“May God bless the brave law enforcement officers who continue to run toward danger,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said at the news conference.
John Probst, an employee at the Henry Pratt Co. in Aurora, told ABC7 that he ran out of the back door as the shooting unfolded Friday afternoon. Probst says he recognized the gunman and that he works for the company.
“What I saw was the guy running down the aisle with a pistol with a laser on it,” Probst said.
Probst said he wasn’t hurt but that another colleague was “bleeding pretty bad.”
“It’s a shame that mass shootings such as this have become commonplace in our country. It’s a shame that a cold and heartless offender would be so selfish as to think he has the right to take an innocent life,” Aurora Mayor Richard C. Irvin said.
President Donald Trump tweeted his thanks to law enforcement in Aurora and offered his condolences to the victims and their families.
