{"id":13936,"date":"2019-02-16T02:56:21","date_gmt":"2019-02-16T07:56:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=13936"},"modified":"2019-02-16T02:56:21","modified_gmt":"2019-02-16T07:56:21","slug":"aurora-shooting-five-dead-in-illinois-workplace-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2019\/02\/16\/aurora-shooting-five-dead-in-illinois-workplace-attack\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora shooting: Five dead in Illinois workplace attack"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five people were killed and several others injured when a gunman opened fire at an industrial park in the US state of Illinois, police there say.<\/p>\n

The gunman was also killed during an exchange of fire with police officers. Five officers were shot and wounded.<\/p>\n

The shooting took place at a manufacturing company in Aurora, a suburb about 40 miles west of Chicago.<\/p>\n

Police named the gunman as Gary Martin, 45, an employee at the company who was reportedly sacked prior to the attack.<\/p>\n

Officers declined to speculate on a motive, but the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper is reporting that his family say he was “stressed out” by being made redundant.<\/p>\n

The incident is said to have taken place at Henry Pratt Company, a firm that makes valves for large water pipes.<\/p>\n

What have police said about the shooting?<\/h2>\n

Police received reports of an “active shooter” in Aurora at about 13:24 local time (19:24 GMT), Aurora police chief Kristen Ziman said at a press conference.<\/p>\n

They were “fired upon immediately” when they arrived at the scene, she said.<\/p>\n

Ms Ziman added that a rescue task force was quickly deployed to the industrial park, accompanied by the emergency services, including the fire department and paramedics.<\/p>\n

Chris Southwood of the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police described the Aurora officers who attended and were shot as “courageous”.<\/p>\n

“[These] officers and their colleagues did not hesitate to literally put their lives on the line today to stop further bloodshed,” Mr Southwood said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Of the five officers wounded, two were airlifted to nearby trauma centres.<\/p>\n

The names of the five people who were killed have not yet been released.<\/p>\n

How have witnesses described the scene?<\/h2>\n

Witness John Probst, who works at the Henry Pratt Company, earlier told broadcaster ABC7 that he saw the attacker, whom he recognised as a colleague.<\/p>\n

He said the man was carrying a handgun equipped with a laser sight, but this has yet to be confirmed by officials.<\/p>\n

“One of the guys was up in the office [and] he said this person was shooting, and, he come running down and he was bleeding pretty bad… I heard more shots, and we just left the building,” Mr Probst said.<\/p>\n

An employee at nearby Capitol Printing told ABC7 that they had hid in a closet when the shooting began.<\/p>\n

Others in nearby buildings said they locked themselves in.<\/p>\n

Police in Aurora, Colorado – where a man opened fire in a crowded movie theatre in 2012 – quickly tweeted that the incident was not happening in Colorado.<\/p>\n

Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth said: “This is a scary, sad day for all Illinoisans and Americans.”<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump posted a message on Twitter offering his condolences to the victims and their loved ones.<\/p>\n

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Donald J. Trump<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2714<\/b><\/span><\/span>@realDonaldTrump<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Great job by law enforcement in Aurora, Illinois. Heartfelt condolences to all of the victims and their families. America is with you!<\/p>\n

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\"Presentational<\/span><\/figure>\n

The incident on Friday comes a day after the first anniversary of a school shooting in Parkland, Florida, which left 17 dead.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Five people were killed and several others injured when a gunman opened fire at an industrial park in the US state of Illinois, police there say. The gunman was also killed during an exchange of […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109,2,3],"tags":[5527,3961,300],"class_list":{"0":"post-13936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headline","8":"category-news","9":"category-usa","10":"tag-gun-violence","11":"tag-illinois","12":"tag-shooting","13":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13936"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13938,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13936\/revisions\/13938"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}