美国奥罗拉枪击案致5死多伤 枪手事发前遭开除

A man opened fire at a factory in Aurora, Ill. , today, killing five people and wounding several more. The victims include police officers who were responding to the shooting. The gunman was also killed.

NPR's David Schaper has been monitoring this. He joins us now from Chicago. And David, first just walk us through what happened here.

This is at a factory - right? - around 40 miles outside of Chicago. Right, Audie. The shooting happened at a facility owned by the Henry Platt company.

It's a company that makes water valves and valves for power generators and other similar equipment. The police chief of Aurora, Kristen Ziman,

says several 911 calls came in reporting an active shooter in the plant at about 1:24 p. m. this afternoon Central Time. Within just four minutes, the first officers were on the scene. And the shooter opened fire on them.

Those - first two responding officers were both hit and wounded. Three more officers eventually were hit and wounded.

They exchanged gunfire with the shooter and an ultimately shot and killed him. Now, when they finished securing the scene and had the shooter contained and shot,

they found that there were five other victims who were shot and killed at the scene, all employees of the plant. Here is the police chief of Aurora, Kristen Ziman.

My heart goes out to the victims and their families who simply went to work today like any other day. We offer our sincere condolences.

And as the facts of this tragedy unfold, we will provide information and attempt to make sense of it. At this point, what has been reported about the shooter? What have you learned?