[url]http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Factory-Shooting.html[/url]
December 6, 2001
NATIONAL
2 Killed in Indiana Factory Shooting
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Associated Press
Sheriff's Capt. Julie Dijkstra said there were no fatalities immediately reported.
Goshen, Ind., Nu-Wood Factory
The New York Times
Filed at 5:44 p.m. ET
GOSHEN, Ind. (AP) -- A man opened fire Thursday at the simulated-wood factory where he worked, killing a co-worker and wounding several others before committing suicide, authorities said.
State Police officials said one person was slain inside Nu-Wood Decorative Millwork factory. A SWAT team later found the gunman with an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.
``He was dead when they found him,'' Sheriff's Capt. Julie Dijkstra said.
Authorities said five people were treated for gunshot wounds, but their conditions weren't immediately known. Earlier, the mayor and hospital administrators said they feared 30 to 35 people had been shot.
Workers told authorities an automatic weapon was used and some injuries appeared to be shotgun wounds.
The shooting jolted this northern Indiana community. An elementary school kept students inside and Goshen College, a small school run by Mennonites, also told its students and faculty to stay indoors.
Police and SWAT teams surrounded the factory and cordoned off the area. Twelve nearby plants were evacuated, and at least a dozen ambulances lined up near the complex in an industrial park on the edge of town.
``The place is smothered in cops,'' said Chris Barouska, a parts manager at a neighboring Ingersoll-Rand factory. ``Completely surrounded.''
By late afternoon, people could be seen leaving the building with their hands on their heads and rescue crews removed people on stretchers.
Goshen, a community of 29,000 people, is about 100 miles east of Chicago. Nu-Wood makes a polyurethane-based product that resembles white pine and is used as decorative trimming by homebuilders and remodelers.
Goshen High School Principal Ted Mahnensmith said the sheriff's department asked to use the school's parking lot for gathering families.
Herb Stein, a Nu-Wood manufacturer's representative who works out of his home in Dayton, Ohio, said there were more than 60 employees at the factory.
``It's not like an assembly line situation,'' he said. 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. I'm concerned for the people because they treat me like family,'' Zelman said in a telephone interview from a Dayton gas station.