“This situation isn’t suppose to happen in Aurora, not here.”
“A real tragedy.”
“The police saved the day.”
The three comments were repeated often in Friday’s life-changing shooting in Aurora. Time stood still, etched in the minds of a majority of the residents in Aurora, population slightly more than 200,000.
It quickly spread to a national audience through television, radio, social media. Five employees at the Henry Pratt Company in Aurora were shot and killed Friday afternoon. It took the Aurora Police four minutes to arrive on the scene and begin a 90-minute search in the warehouse to neutralize the lone shooter. See the list and thumbnail photos of the five Pratt employees killed by the dismissed employee on page 20.
Aurora police vehicles, Kane County Sheriff’s vehicles, and other first responders, with sirens wailing and flashing lights making their emergency announcements, quickly made their way to the warehouse at 641 Archer, near the West Highland Avenue main office, a few hundred feet north of Prairie Avenue.
The first calls to 911 came at 1:24 p.m. and officers were at the Archer site in four minutes.
Two Aurora officers were shot on their immediate arrival by Gary Montez Martin, 45, of Aurora who had been discharged from Henry Pratt only a short time earlier. It ended that five Aurora police officers were wounded physically, however, were expected to recover. The 90-minute search, without shots fired in that time, ended when a police BearCat, an armored personnel carrier, entered the 29,000-foot warehouse and police officers found the shooter, Martin, in a back room awaiting the police arrival.
He legally purchased a gun when he was issued an owners card in 2014. He applied for a concealed carry permit which led to discovery that he had a felony in Mississippi in 1995 which disqualified his ownership.
In that quiet 90 minutes, businesses, offices, and schools on the West Side area went into lockdown, including West Aurora School District 129 schools. It lasted long enough so that the high school’s sophomore boys basketball team did not go to Elgin for its game.
Businesses closed and in some cases proprietors allowed customers access when identity was certain.
Al Benson/The Voice
Managers at Prisco’s Family Market, five blocks to the west, told customers to leave, go west, and not east, that there was a police emergency near Luigi’s Pizza and Fun Center. At 3 p.m. police went to Luigi’s because of the ample space inside the restaurant and asked to use several rooms after announcing the store area was on lockdown. Owner Bill Poss and marketing manager Bob Lockwood allowed the contingent full access to building. Lockwood said well more than 100 pizzas were served as a donation.
In between Prisco’s and Luigi’s during the course of the first two hours, vehicles from the Chicago suburbs moved east on Prairie and found parking space on the closed-down street. Flashing lights prevailed. A Joliet BearCat, vehicles from Sugar Grove, Plainfield, Geneva, Batavia, Shorewood, St. Charles, Elgin, Glen Ellyn, Wood Dale, Lombard, and on up to more than 30 communities represented, made their way to the emergency site. The bond was tight.
Strong calls for healing, Aurora Strong, evolved. The Nation’s attention went to Aurora, gripped in solidarity and bewilderment at the turn of events. Governor JB Pritzker made a visit on his way from Chicago for a 5 p.m. press conference, the first of three, at the Aurora Police Department.