Chicago killer ‘shouldn’t have had gun’
Print Edition
The man who opened fire and killed five co-workers, including an intern working his first day at a suburban Chicago warehouse, took a gun he wasn’t supposed to have to a job he was about to lose.
Right after learning on 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 five people and injuring a sixth employee, police said on Saturday.
Martin shot and wounded five of the first officers to get to the scene inside the sprawling warehouse in Aurora, Illinois, 65 kilometers from Chicago.
He then 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.
Friday’s attack was carried out by a man with a criminal history who was armed with a gun he shouldn’t have had.
Martin, 45, had six arrests over the years in Aurora, for what police Chief Kristen Ziman described as “traffic and domestic battery-related issues.” He also had a 1995 felony conviction for aggravated assault in Mississippi that should have prevented him from buying his gun.
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through a more rigorous background check that his Mississippi conviction was flagged and his firearm owner’s ID card was revoked, Ziman said. Once his card was revoked, he could no longer legally have a gun.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.
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