5 People Killed in Workplace Mass Shooting at Illinois Industrial Building, Shooter Dead

Five people were killed Friday in a workplace shooting in an industrial building in Aurora, Illinois, police announced at a press conference.

Aurora police got the call for an active shooter at 1:24 p.m., Aurora police chief Kristen Ziman told reporters. The shooting took place at the Henry Pratt Company in a 29,000-square-foot building.

The suspect was fatally shot by police, Ziman said. He was identified as Gary Martin, 45, who authorities believe was an employee of the company.

The identities of the deceased people have not been released. It was not immediately clear if the five people police announced were killed included the shooter.

Five responding police officers were shot, and they are all alive, Ziman said. A sixth officer sustained a knee injury.

Ziman, speaking of the fatal victims, said, “My heart goes out to the victims and their families who simply went to work today like any other day.”

John Probst, a Henry Pratt employee who escaped the building, told Chicago’s ABC7 he recognized the shooter as a coworker, and that the shooter was firing indiscriminately using a pistol with a laser attached to it.

“One of the guys was up in the office, he said this person was shooting, and he [came] running down and he was bleeding pretty bad, and the next thing you know he was walking back and forth, I heard more shots, and we just left the building,” Probst told the outlet.

At the press conference, Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin said, “We must never forget those victims who were senselessly — senselessly — gunned down.”

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker said the mass shooting was part of the “epidemic of gun violence that continues to ravage communities.”

The shooting takes place a day after the Feb. 14, 2018 mass shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., when a former student killed 17 people.

Aurora is about 40 miles west of downtown Chicago, with a population of about 200,000.