• Police: Convicted felon Aurora attacker used gun he shouldn't have owne

    From Felcher Adam Schiff@21:1/5 to All on Sat Feb 15 04:43:52 2020
    XPost: alt.gossip.celebrities, sac.general, alt.politics.democrats.d
    XPost: talk.politics.guns

    AURORA, Ill. – The man who opened fire and killed five co-
    workers including the plant manager, human resources manager and
    an intern working his first day at a suburban Chicago
    manufacturing warehouse, took a gun he wasn't supposed to have
    to a job 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, police said Saturday.

    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 in Aurora, Illinois, a city of 200,000 about
    40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Chicago.

    After that flurry of shots and with officers from throughout the
    region streaming in to help, he 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," 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."

    Like in many of the 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 supposed to have.

    Martin, 45, had six arrests over the years in Aurora, 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 using 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.

    Scott Hall, president and CEO of Mueller Water Products Inc.,
    which owns Henry Pratt, said that Martin came to work for his
    normal shift Friday and was being fired when he started shooting.

    "We can confirm that the individual was being terminated Friday
    for a culmination of a various workplace rules violations," he
    told a news conference Saturday. He gave no details of the
    violations by Martin at the plant that makes valves for
    industrial purposes.

    A company background check of Martin when he joined Henry Pratt
    15 years ago did not turn up a 1995 felony conviction for
    aggravated assault in Mississippi, Hall said.

    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.

    It was Wehner's first day on the job, his uncle Jay Wehner told
    The Associated Press. Trevor Wehner, 21, was on the dean's list
    at NIU's business college and was on track to graduate in May
    with a degree in human resource management.

    "He always, always was happy. I have no bad words for him. He
    was a wonderful person. You can't say anything but nice things
    about him," Jay Wehner said of his nephew.

    https://www.foxnews.com/us/police-aurora-attacker-used-gun-he- shouldnt-have-owned
     

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)