AURORA, Ill. _ A gunman opened fire inside an Aurora manufacturing plant Friday afternoon, killing five people and wounding five police officers who had responded to the scene before he was killed in a shootout, police said.
The shooting stunned Aurora _ Illinois' second largest city _ and reverberated throughout the state and nation, becoming the latest mass shooting in the United States.
Bob Gonzalez was having a conversation with a client when he saw a few police cars fly past, bound for the nearby Henry Pratt Co. He thought at first they were responding to a fire, but the cars just kept coming _ Aurora police, state police, even a vehicle from the Department of Homeland Security.
He soon realized the emergency wasn't a fire. It was a mass shooting in an industrial park a few hundred feet from his office.
"I've seen it on the news happening someplace else, but never here in Aurora," said Gonzalez, an insurance agent who also serves as the board president of West Aurora School District 129.
A few hours later, police gave the somber toll: Five people were killed and five police officers were wounded by a gunman who worked at Henry Pratt, a manufacturer of industrial valves. A sixth officer suffered a knee injury. It wasn't clear how he was injured, but he wasn't shot.
The gunman, 45-year-old Gary Martin, was also killed in the shootout, authorities said. The names of his victims were not released as of Friday evening.
Authorities did not immediately offer a motive, but some reports said Martin had recently lost his job at the plant.
Aurora Police Chief Kristen Ziman said the department received multiple calls at 1:24 p.m. about a shooting at the company, on Archer Avenue. Officers arrived four minutes later and immediately drew fire, she said _ two of the first four officers entering the building were shot.
More officers arrived, and three more were shot, she said. As some tried to care for gunshot victims, she said, others tracked Martin through the 29,000-square-foot building.
"When they located the offender, they engaged in gunfire with him, ultimately killing him," she said at a news conference.
Police said two of the wounded officers were airlifted to Chicago-area trauma hospitals.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, standing with Aurora officials at the news conference, said there was no way for him to prepare for this kind of event, the first tragedy of his administration.
"There are no words for the kind of evil that robs our neighbors of their hopes, their dreams and their futures," he said. "There are no words to express our gratitude to the officers who were wounded in the line of duty as they responded to the gravest kind of danger they could face."
Tiffany Probst, whose father works in the building, told the Chicago Tribune she first heard about the shooting when her friend alerted her to a Facebook post. She jumped in her car and drove toward the scene, but couldn't get close.
Her father doesn't carry a cellphone, so she had no way to reach him. She sat in her car and watched the police response on her phone.
"We're sitting there staring at the screen and watching SWAT about to go in," she said.
Finally, after about 15 minutes, her father managed to find someone with a phone and called her, and relief replaced her growing panic.
As the investigation continued, a Kane County sheriff's office bomb squad vehicle could be seen outside what was believed to be Martin's apartment building on Selmartin Road.
Mary McKnight, who lives in the area, stepped out of her car with a cherry cheesecake purchased for her son's birthday, to a flurry of police cars, officers and media trucks. "This is a strange thing to come home to," she said.
People at the home of a relative of the Martin family in the western suburbs were visibly emotional and upset Friday evening. They asked for privacy to mourn.
"We are mourning for the victims and we are mourning for our families," said one woman, who declined to be identified but spoke on behalf of the family. "We need peace ... We're worried about the other people who were killed and hurt. Our family has to mourn too because we lost one too."
Officials with Henry Pratt could not immediately be reached for comment. The company began in 1901 as a metal fabricating shop and is a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Mueller Water Co.
