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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ID car was revoked, Ziman said. Once his card was revoked, he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
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