Workplace shooter’s criminal history meant he should never have had gun
The man who opened f ire and killed f ive co-workers at a suburban Chicago manufacturing plant took a gun he wasn’t allowed to have to a job he must have known he was about to lose.
The man who opened fire and killed five co-workers at a suburban Chicago manufacturing plant took a gun he wasn’t allowed 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 get to the scene, including one who didn’t even make it inside the sprawling warehouse. After that flurry of shots and with officers from throughout the region streaming in to help, Martin ran off and hid in the back of the building, where officers found him about an hour later and killed him during an exchange of gunfire, police said.
“He was probably waiting for us to get to him there,” said Aurora police Lt. Rick Rob- ertson. “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.”
Like in many of this country’s mass shootings, Friday’s attack was carried out by a man with a violent criminal history who was armed with a gun he wasn’t allowed to have.
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check that uses digital fingerprinting that his Mississippi conviction was flagged and his firearm owner’s ID card was revoked, Ziman said.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 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 regular 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.
Police identified the slain workers as human resources manager Clayton Parks of Elgin; plant manager Josh Pinkard of Oswego; mold operator Russell Beyer of Yorkville; stock room attendant and fork lift operator Vicente Juarez of Oswego; and human resources intern and Northern Illinois University student Trevor Wehner, who lived in Dekalb and grew up in Sheridan.