Police: Illinois shooter illegally possessed gun
AURORA, Ill. — The man who opened fire and killed five co-workers at a suburban Chicago manufacturing plant took a gun it was illegal for him to have to a job he must have known he was about to lose.
Right after learning Friday that he was being fired from his job of 15 years at the Henry Pratt Co. in Aurora, Gary Martin pulled out a gun and began shooting, killing the three people in the room with him and two others just outside, and wounding a sixth employee before officers began arriving, drawing his attention their way, police said Saturday at a news conference in the city of about 200,000 people roughly 40 miles west of Chicago.
Martin shot and wounded five of the first officers to arrive at the scene, including one who didn’t even make it inside the sprawling warehouse. After that first flurry of gunfire with officers, Martin fled to the back of the building, where officers found him about an hour later and killed him during another exchange of gunfire, police said. “He was probably waiting for us to get to him there,” Aurora police Lt. Rick Robertson said. “It was just a very short gunfight and it was over, so he was basically in the back waiting for us and fired upon us and our officers fired.”
Martin, 45, had six arrests over the years in Aurora, one of Chicago’s far western suburbs, for what police Chief Kristen Ziman described as “traffic and domestic battery-related issues” and for violating an order of protection. He also had a 1995 felony conviction for aggravated assault in Mississippi that should have prevented him from buying his gun, Ziman said.
He was able to buy the Smith and Wesson .40-caliber handgun on March 11, 2014, because he was issued a firearm owner’s identification card two months earlier after passing an initial background check. It wasn’t until he applied for a concealed carry permit five days after buying the gun and went through a more rigorous background check that uses digital fingerprinting that his Mississippi conviction was flagged and his firearm owner’s ID car was revoked, Ziman said. Once his card was revoked, he could no longer legally have a gun.
“Absolutely, he was not supposed to be in possession of a firearm,” she said.
But he was, and on Friday he took it and several magazines of ammunition to work.
Ziman said she doesn’t know why Martin was being fired or whether he showed up that day just for the meeting or to work his shift. The company, which makes valves for industrial purposes, issued a statement Friday expressing condolences but not mentioning the circumstances surrounding the attack.
The employee who survived being shot is recovering at a hospital, Ziman said Saturday. None of the officers who were shot received life-threatening wounds, she said.