Five dead, police officers injured in mass shooting at manufacturing plant outside Chicago

Five dead, police officers injured in mass shooting at manufacturing plant outside Chicago
Image credit: CBS News
Matthew Chapman
February 16, 2019

On Friday, a gunman killed five and wounded five police officers at the Henry Pratt Company manufacturing plant in Aurora, a suburb southwest of Chicago.

"It's a shame that mass shootings such as this have become commonplace in our country," said Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin. "It's a shame 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."

The shooter, a 45-year-old employee named Gary Martin, was also killed. His motive remains unknown.

President Donald Trump and Illinois Sens. Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth all responded to the tragedy:

According to Vox, this is the 39th mass shooting in America since the start of 2019. Definitions of what constitutes a mass shooting vary, but incidents in which four or more people are killed in a public place with a firearm unrelated to other criminal activity have been growing deadlier in recent years, even as gun homicides as a whole have declined over the last few decades.

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