4 officers injured in office shooting

An active shooter reported Friday afternoon at Henry Pratt Co. in Aurora, Ill., is dead, law enforcement sources said.

City of Aurora Director of Communications Clayton Muhammad said that four officers were injured in the shooting, and are recovering.

A fifth officer was injured responding to the incident but not in the shooting. There are multiple injuries.

Dozens of law enforcement officials responded to the scene at the manufacturing firm, about 30 miles west of Chicago.

An employee named John Probst told the local ABC affiliate he was in the building when the shooting took place. He identified the gunman as a co-worker.

“One of the guys was up in the office, he said this person was shooting and he come running down and he was bleeding pretty bad,” he said. “... What I saw was the guy running down the aisle with a pistol with a laser on it.”

Bob Gonzalez, president of the school board of the nearby West Aurora School District 129, lives and works what he estimated was 50 feet from the Henry Pratt Co. His twin 4year-old grandchildren were in his home upstairs and he was talking with a client in his State Farm office downstairs when they heard sirens and squad cars fly by.

They at first assumed it was a fire, but when the squads kept coming for the next 20 minutes, they knew it was more. He saw cars from Aurora and other nearby agencies, state police troopers and a homeland security vehicle.

As soon as he heard it was a shooting, he locked the doors to his office, closed the blinds upstairs, took his grandchildren to a bathroom in the back of the apartment and told them to stay away from the windows. They asked questions and he tried to keep them calm, telling them that maybe it was just a fire, “but I was very scared at the same time,” he said.

According to The Associated Press, the White House says President Donald Trump has been briefed on a shooting and is monitoring the situation.