Three people were killed and five more have been wounded after a gunman attacked staff at a transformer manufacturing plant in St Louis, Missouri.
It is not clear at the moment if the gunman, identified by
USA Today and
CNN as Timothy Hendron, an employee at the plant, is among those who were killed during the shooting which began at around 6:30 a.m. local time on Thursday.
However, of the five people wounded when Timothy Hendron walked in to the plant owned by Swiss-based
ABB Group and opened fire with an assault rifle and a handgun, three are said to be in a critical condition and two in a serious/fair condition.
Timothy Hendron's motivation in shooting his fellow workers - 40 to 50 of them were at the plant when he began shooting and some sought refuge on the roof of the plant, some in boilers and others in broom closets - may have been his involvement in a 2006 lawsuit filed against the administrators of ABB's retirement plan. The lawsuit alleges that ABB and its pension-review committee burdened employees'
401(k) accounts with "unreasonable and excessive" fees and expenses.
A spokesman for ABB confirmed that 100 people are employed at its plant in the U.S. Midwest Region but many had not arrived for work when the shooting took place because of heavy snow.
The plant was finally cleared of all its workers three and a half hours after Hendron arrived with his weapons; he reportedly first opened fire in the parking lot, and a nearby Interstate was closed at one stage as police searched the local area. According to the
BBC Police Captain Sam Dotson said of the search his officers were conducting at the plant itself:
It's a very large complex and it's connected to an even larger complex, so it's a very slow and methodical process and it will take several hours
ABB issued a statement saying:
Our main concern is the safety of our employees. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims
UPDATE 4:20 PM CENTRAL TIME -
KSAX/Associated Press confirm police have found the body of a man believed to be 51-year-old Timothy Hendron inside the ABB plant, meaning that there are at present four people dead following Thursday morning's shooting. The man had seemingly died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
