Multiple people dead in shooting at brewery
Multiple people were killed Wednesday in a shooting on the Molson Coors Brewing Co. campus, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said.
The dead include the shooter, said Barrett. Police said the gunman, a 51-yearold Milwaukee man, killed five people.
“It is a horrible, horrible day for the employees here. It’s a very rough day for anyone who is close to this situation,” the mayor said.
President Donald Trump addressed the shooting before speaking at the White House with reporters about steps his administration is taking to combat the coronavirus. He said the attacker killed five people and wounded others.
“Our hearts break for them and their loved ones,” the president said. “We send our condolences. We’ll be with them, and it’s a terrible thing, a terrible thing.”
It occurred at a sprawling complex that includes a mix of corporate offices and brewing facilities. At least 600 people work at the complex, which is widely known in the Milwaukee area as “Miller Valley,” a reference to the Miller Brewing Co. that is now part of Molson Coors.
James Boyles told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that his wife, Lasonya Ragdales, works at Molson Coors in the claims department. She was texting from inside the facility and told her husband that there was an active shooter and she was locked in a room with a bunch of co-workers, the Journal Sentinel reported.
Attorney General Josh Kaul called the shooting “gut-wrenching.”“Miller Valley” features a 160-year-old brewery, with a packaging center that fills thousands of cans and bottles every minute and a distribution center the size of five football fields.
Tours take people to underground caves where beer was once stored, a saloon with intricate woodwork, a stein hall with stained-glass windows, a champagne room meeting hall with leaded-glass windows, and an outdoor beer garden that can hold 300 people.
Before Wednesday’s shooting, there had been three mass killings nationwide in 2020, with 12 total victims. All have been shootings. In 2019, there were 44 mass killings, with 224 total victims.