Gunman kills 5 people, wounds 5 police at Illinois business

Updated: 7:16 p.m. EST

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A gunman opened fire at a manufacturing plant in suburban Chicago on Friday, killing five people and wounding five police officers before he was fatally shot, police said.

Aurora, Illinois, Police Chief Kristen Ziman told a news conference that the gunman was 45-year-old Gary Martin and said he was believed to be an employee at the Henry Pratt Co. in the city about 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Chicago. She told reporters that officers arrived within four minutes of receiving reports of the shooting and were fired upon as soon as they entered the 29,000-square-foot manufacturing warehouse.

“May God bless the brave law enforcement officers who continue to run toward danger,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said at the news conference.

Hospitals reported treating at least seven patients from the shooting, though their conditions weren’t released. Two of the officers were airlifted to trauma centers in Chicago, Ziman said. Officials did not say the total number of people injured other than the police officers. Police said they did not know his motive.

Live TV reports showed dozens of first responder vehicles outside a building housing the Henry Pratt Co. in Aurora, a city of about 200,000 people about 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Chicago.

Several ATF teams responded to the shooting and were at the scene, according to the agency’s Chicago spokeswoman, and the FBI said it also was responding.

John Probst, an employee at the Henry Pratt Co. in Aurora, told ABC7 that he ran out of the back door as the shooting unfolded Friday afternoon. Probst says he recognized the gunman and that he works for the company.

“What I saw was the guy running down the aisle with a pistol with a laser on it,” Probst said.

Probst said he wasn’t hurt but that another colleague was “bleeding pretty bad.”

The company makes valves for industrial purposes.

The White House said President Donald Trump was briefed on the shooting and monitoring the situation as he prepared to depart for a weekend trip to his home in Palm Beach, Florida.

Presence Mercy Medical Center was treating two patients and a third had been transferred by helicopter to another hospital, spokesman Matt Wakely said. Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital and Advocate Lutheran General Hospital each had one patient from the shooting, spokeswoman Kate Eller said. Rush Copley Medical Center received three patients from the shooting and all are being treated for non-life threatening injuries, spokeswoman Courtney Satlak said.