Aurora, Illinois shooting | |
---|---|
Location | Henry Pratt Company, 641 Archer Ave, Aurora, Illinois, United States |
Coordinates | 41°45′13″N88°19′54″W / 41.7537°N 88.3316°W |
Date | February 15, 2019 1:24 – 2:59 p.m. [1] (CST, UTC−6) |
Attack type | Mass shooting, workplace violence, mass murder, shootout |
Weapons | Smith & Wesson .40-caliber semi-automatic pistol with a green laser sight [2] [3] [4] |
Deaths | 6 (including the perpetrator) |
Injured | 7 (6 by gunfire) [5] |
Perpetrator | Gary Montez Martin |
On February 15, 2019, a mass shooting took place at Henry Pratt Company in Aurora, Illinois, United States. Six people died, including the perpetrator, 45-year-old former employee Gary Montez Martin, who was shot and killed by responding police officers. Six others were injured, including five police officers.
The first reports of the shooting began to arrive at 1:24 p.m., [6] with the first officers arriving four minutes from the first call. Witnesses said they saw the perpetrator carrying a handgun with a green laser sight attached. [7] The shooting prompted a multi-agency response with agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the United States Marshals Service assisting local police. [6] The shooter returned fire when law enforcement arrived. Officers reported at 2:59 p.m. that the suspect had been shot and killed. The exchange of gunfire lasted about 90 minutes. In total, five people were killed by the gunman. Five police officers were injured along with another civilian. The perpetrator was killed by law enforcement officers. [7] [8] [9]
The five victims fatally shot were male workers at the Henry Pratt plant: a 32-year-old human resources manager, a 37-year-old plant manager, [10] a 46-year-old mold operator, a 55-year-old stock room attendant and forklift operator, and a 21-year-old student of Northern Illinois University on his first day as a human resources intern. [5] [11]
A sixth plant employee sustained gunshot wounds during the shooting and was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. [12]
The six injured police officers ranged in age from 23 to 59. Four of them sustained gunshot wounds, one was injured by shrapnel, and one had a non-gunshot injury sustained while responding to the shooting. None of the injuries were life-threatening. [5]
Gary Montez Martin, a 45-year-old former employee of the Henry Pratt plant was identified as the perpetrator. [13] Relatives of the shooter told reporters that he had been released from his position at the company about two weeks prior to the shooting. [7] Other news outlets reported that he was being fired from his job on the day of the shooting, [2] and that the shooting itself started during the termination meeting. [14]
Martin was born and raised in Holly Springs, Mississippi, and at the age of 12, convicted in 1995 for a felony aggravated assault while living in Mississippi, [15] [16] and served two-and-a-half years in prison in Mississippi for that conviction. [14] Aurora police stated that he had six arrests with the Aurora Police Department, including arrests for domestic violence and violating a restraining order, and that he had a 2017 arrest in Oswego, Illinois for disorderly conduct and criminal damage to property. [13] [17]
Martin was not legally allowed to possess a gun in Illinois because of his prior felony conviction in Mississippi. However, in 2014 he applied for, and was issued an Illinois FOID card by the Illinois State Police. In March 2014, he was able to buy a gun (which he is believed to have used during the shooting) from a licensed gun dealer in Aurora using that FOID card. [18] [17] Later that month he applied for a concealed carry license from the Illinois State Police. The concealed carry background check included a fingerprint check, and Martin's felony conviction was discovered at that point. The Illinois State Police rejected his concealed carry application, cancelled his FOID card and sent him a written notice demanding that he turn in the gun that he had purchased. He did not do so. [17] According to a CNN report, the authorities are now trying "to determine why he didn't surrender the weapon and whether law enforcement followed up with him to confiscate the gun." [18]
On February 15, after the shooting, the police conducted a search of Martin's home but did not find anything to indicate that he had planned the shooting in advance. [19] Upon further investigation into the crime, the police found out that the gunman did plan this attack. On May 1, it was reported that the gunman entered the workplace with a gun and intended opening fire on people inside. The police learned from interviewing workers at the plant that the gunman made threats prior to being fired, and is quoted as saying, "If I get fired, I'm going to kill every motherfucker in here" and "I am going to blow police up." The employee who heard this said he did not bother reporting this to anybody, as the gunman made comments like that regularly. [20]
Senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin thanked law enforcement for their response, as did Governor J. B. Pritzker and President Donald Trump. [21] Trump also offered condolences to the victims and their families. [22] Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin said, "It's a shame that mass shootings such as this have become commonplace in our country [and] that a cold and heartless offender would be so selfish as to think he has the right to take an innocent life. But we as a society cannot allow these horrific acts to become commonplace." [23]
The Northern Illinois University shooting was a school shooting that took place on Thursday, February 14, 2008, at Northern Illinois University (NIU) in DeKalb, Illinois. Steven Kazmierczak, 27 years old and a 2006 NIU graduate, opened fire with a shotgun and three pistols in a crowd of students on campus, killing five students and injuring 17 more people, before fatally shooting himself.
A mass shooting is a violent crime in which one or more attackers kill or injure multiple individuals simultaneously using a firearm. There is no widely accepted definition of "mass shooting" and different organizations tracking such incidents use different definitions. Definitions of mass shootings exclude warfare and sometimes exclude instances of gang violence, armed robberies, familicides and terrorism. The perpetrator of an ongoing mass shooting may be referred to as an active shooter.
On July 20, 2012, a mass shooting occurred inside a Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, United States, during a midnight screening of the film The Dark Knight Rises. Dressed in tactical clothing, 24-year-old James Eagan Holmes set off tear gas grenades and shot into the audience with multiple firearms. Twelve people were killed, and 70 others were injured, 58 of them from gunfire.
The Washington Navy Yard shooting occurred on September 16, 2013, when 34-year-old Aaron Alexis fatally shot 12 people and injured three others in a mass shooting at the headquarters of the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) inside the Washington Navy Yard in southeast Washington, D.C. The attack took place in the Navy Yard's Building 197; it began around 8:16 a.m. EDT and ended when police killed Alexis around 9:25 a.m. It is the deadliest mass shooting in Washington, D.C. history, as well as the second deadliest mass murder on a U.S. military base, behind the 2009 Fort Hood shooting.
On 14–15 February 2015, three separate shootings occurred in Copenhagen, Denmark. In total, two victims and the perpetrator were killed, while five police officers were wounded.
On June 12, 2016, 29-year-old Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people and wounded 53 more in a mass shooting at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, United States before Orlando Police officers fatally shot him after a three-hour standoff.
On October 1, 2017, a mass shooting occurred when 64-year-old Stephen Paddock opened fire on the crowd attending the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada from his 32nd-floor suites in the Mandalay Bay hotel. He fired more than 1,000 rounds, killing 60 people and wounding at least 413. The ensuing panic brought the total number of injured to approximately 867. About an hour later, he was found dead in his room from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The motive for the shooting is officially undetermined.
On November 13–14, 2017, a series of shootings occurred in Rancho Tehama, an unincorporated community in Tehama County, California, U.S. The gunman, 44-year-old Kevin Janson Neal, died by suicide after a Corning police officer rammed and stopped his stolen vehicle. During the shooting spree, five people were killed and eighteen others were injured at eight separate crime scenes, including an elementary school. Ten people suffered bullet wounds and eight were cut by flying glass caused by the gunfire. The injured victims were transported to several area clinics and hospitals.
On February 14, 2018, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire on students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the Miami suburban town of Parkland, Florida, United States, killing 17 people and injuring 17 others. Cruz, a former student at the school, fled the scene on foot by blending in with other students and was arrested without incident approximately one hour and twenty minutes later in nearby Coral Springs. Police and prosecutors investigated "a pattern of disciplinary issues and unnerving behavior".
The 2018 Toronto shooting, known locally as the Danforth shooting, was a mass shooting that occurred on Danforth Avenue in the Greektown neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario, Canada on the night of July 22, 2018. Faisal Hussain killed two people and wounded thirteen using a Smith & Wesson M&P .40-calibre handgun. He died by suicide after a shootout with Toronto Police Service (TPS) officers. Despite a year long investigation, authorities were unable to determine a motive for the shooting. They noted that Hussain had mental health issues and a long time obsession with violence.
On November 19, 2018, a mass shooting took place at the Mercy Hospital and Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois. An attending physician at the hospital, a police officer, and a pharmacy resident were killed. The gunman, later identified as Juan Lopez, the ex-fiancé of one of the victims, later died in a shootout with other responding officers.
On July 28, 2019, a mass shooting occurred at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California. The gunman killed three people and wounded 17 others before killing himself after a shootout with responding police officers.
On August 4, 2019, 24-year-old Connor Betts shot and killed nine people, including his brother, and wounded 17 others near the entrance of the Ned Peppers Bar in the Oregon District of Dayton, Ohio. Betts was fatally shot by responding police officers 32 seconds after the first shots were fired. A total of 27 people were taken to area hospitals. It is the deadliest mass shooting to occur in Ohio since the 1975 Easter Sunday Massacre.
On August 31, 2019, a spree shooting occurred in the West Texas cities of Midland and Odessa, involving a gunman shooting multiple people from a vehicle. Eight people were killed, including the perpetrator, and twenty-five people were injured, including three police officers. It was the third major mass shooting to take place in the United States in August 2019, following the El Paso Walmart shooting and the Dayton shooting.
On November 14, 2019, at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California, United States, a school shooting occurred when a student with a pistol, identified as 16-year-old Nathaniel Berhow, shot five schoolmates, killing two, before killing himself.
The Uvalde school shooting was a mass shooting that occurred on May 24, 2022, at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, United States, when 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, a former student at the school, fatally shot 19 students and two teachers, while 17 others were injured but survived. After shooting and severely wounding his grandmother at their home earlier that day, Ramos drove to and entered the school, remaining in an adjoining classroom for more than an hour before members of the United States Border Patrol Tactical Unit fatally shot him after he had bypassed numerous local and state officers who had been in the school's hallways for over an hour.
On July 4, 2022, a mass shooting occurred during an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois, United States. The shooting occurred at 10:14 a.m. CDT (UTC−05:00), roughly 15 minutes after the parade had started. Seven people were killed, and forty-eight others were wounded by bullets or shrapnel.