Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 14, 1994 TAG: 9404140336
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RESEARCH TRIANGEL PARK, N.C. LENGTH: Medium
``He apparently came in and shot the ones who fired him,'' said Sonny Hughes, a Sumitomo Electric Fiber Optics Corp. employee.
Authorities evacuated the Japanese-owned plant after the morning shooting and spent more than six hours searching the grounds before finding the gunman's body behind cabinets on the top floor of the building.
Chief Deputy Walter L. Lawrence of the Durham County Sheriff's Department confirmed that the gunman killed himself. The man's name wasn't immediately released.
Among those shot were the man's former supervisor and a woman who had filed a sexual harassment complaint against him, said Bob Martin, an independent contract writer who was working at Sumitomo on Wednesday. The names of the dead and wounded were not immediately released.
Some of the suspect's former co-workers told WRAL-TV that the man had made threats when he was fired last fall and was taken out with a police escort.
The shooting happened in the fiber-optics inspection division a little before 8 a.m., while hundreds of employees were in the plant.
``When I heard the first shot, that's when I looked up, and I saw the guy with the gun in his hand and running, and I said, `Oh my god, he's going to shoot everybody in here' and I just took off running,'' Patricia Cardinez told WRAL.
As the search continued into early afternoon with no sign of the suspect, other nearby companies canceled lunch hours and locked their doors.
Sumitomo employees were sent off the property, and weren't allowed into the parking lot to get their vehicles. Shuttle buses took some to a Burroughs Wellcome Co. cafeteria nearby and relatives picked up others. Many huddled together in a pouring morning rain just outside the plant to talk about the shooting.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB