USA: Three killed in open gun firing at Maryland factory
New Delhi: Around 23-year-old man working at a Maryland manufacturing plant killed three people intentionally by shooting them down. Assailant not identified by police but wounded in an exchange of gunfire with a Maryland state police while trying to flee in a car.
Washington County Sheriff Douglas Mullendore said, “The shooter used a semi-automatic pistol handgun. Both the suspect and trooper were taken to a local hospital for treatment of gunshot wounds in the latest in a series of mass shootings to plague the United States.”
Mullendore declined to elaborate on the circumstances or possible motives behind the attack but said the gunman and all of his victims were employees of Columbia Machine in Smithsburg, in northern Maryland near the Pennsylvania state line.
The motive for the shooting was not immediately clear. The shooting came after a series of recent high-profile mass killings, including one in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, N.Y.
The employees who were fatally shot were Mark A. Frey, 50, Charles E. Minnick Jr., 31, and Joshua R. Wallace, 30. The man who was critically injured is Brandon C. Michael, 42.
The suspect was identified as a 23-year-old from West Virginia, but the authorities did not release his name because he had not been charged, Sheriff Douglas W. Mullendore of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office said.
The spokesperson of the company where the incident happened, said, “the company is cooperating with authorities in their probe into the shooting.”
(Vinayak)
