Posted on 12/06/2001 7:14:44 PM PST by ATOMIC_PUNK
Two Dead After Indiana Shooting
GOSHEN, Ind. (AP) — A man returned to the factory where he worked after a dispute and opened fire Thursday, killing a co-worker and wounding six others, authorities said.
A SWAT team later found the gunman dead inside the simulated-wood factory with an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. A shotgun was under his body.
``All I'm aware of is there was a dispute, and he left the property and came back,'' Police Chief Terry Schollian said.
The gunman had apparently just been fired or was about to be fired from the Nu-Wood Decorative Millwork, police said. His name and those of his victims were not immediately released.
Six people were wounded, the chief said. Most were ``walking wounded,'' and one victim in critical condition was upgraded to serious condition late Thursday.
As many as 35 were inside the plant at the time of the shootings, but most escaped unharmed, Schollian said. Earlier, the mayor and hospital administrators said they feared 30 to 35 people had been shot.
One employee called police from inside the factory to advise what route the SWAT team should use to enter the building, the chief said. Tammy Funderburk of nearby New Paris said she spoke briefly by cell phone with her 18-year-old son, who worked at the factory and escaped uninjured.
``He saw the gunman coming and he had a big rifle,'' Funderburk said. ``He saw the gunman shooting people and he ran out the back door as fast as he could.''
The shooting jolted this northern Indiana community of 29,000 about 100 miles east of Chicago. An elementary school kept its pupils inside and Goshen College, a small school run by Mennonites, told students and faculty to stay indoors.
Alerted by a 911 call from another business nearby, police and SWAT teams surrounded the factory and cordoned off the industrial park. Twelve nearby plants were evacuated.The place is smothered in cops,'' Chris Barouska, a parts manager at a neighboring Ingersoll-Rand factory, said as authorities scrambled to find the gunman.
By late afternoon, people were leaving the building with their hands on their heads and rescue crews removed people on stretchers.
Nu-Wood makes a polyurethane-based product that resembles white pine and is used as decorative trimming by homebuilders and remodelers.
According to Dun & Bradstreet, Nu-Wood reported $3.1 million in sales last year. Nu-Wood changed its name from GR Plastics Inc. earlier this year and leases 40,000 square feet at the Goshen building.
``It's not like an assembly line situation,'' said Herb Stein, a Nu-Wood manufacturer's representative who works out of his home in Akron, Ohio. ``Everyone knows each other, and everyone intermixes with each other.''
Randy Zelman, who sells Nu-Wood products to wholesalers that supply builders and developers, said he heard about the shooting as he drove home to Columbus, Ohio.
``I'm all shook up,'' Zelman said from a Dayton, Ohio, gas station. ``I'm concerned for the people because they treat me like family.''
So? If he didn't mind committing murder, he certainly wouldn't have minded violating a restraining order written on a piece of paper.
If someone started shooting at me, I would think it a howitzer.
(assuming of course, that you totally disreguard the fact that a (once) breathing , (somewhat) Thinking human being was holding this gun and deciding to pull the trigger!!, and that YOU DO NOT question how guns by themselves can kill people. ) < /sarcasm>
I had to stop watching it. It was clear the media had zero facts and the conjecture was sickening. I wondered if they even had the right building. The word for the day is "hype".
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