Three dead, 15 injured in Kansas factory shooting

A man who wounded three people before storming into the central Kansas factory where he worked and shooting 15 others, killing three of them, had just been served a protection from abuse order that likely triggered the attack, a sheriff said.

The attack on Thursday evening at the Excel Industries lawnmower parts plant in Hesston ended when a police officer killed the attacker during a shootout, Harvey County Sheriff T. Walton said.

He described the officer as a “tremendous hero” because there were still 200 or 300 other people in the factory and that the “shooter wasn’t done by any means”.

“Had that Hesston officer not done what he did, this would be a whole lot more tragic,” Walton said.

The gunman was identified as Cedric Ford, a 38-year-old who had several convictions in Florida over the last decade, including for burglary, grand theft, fleeing from an officer, and carrying a concealed weapon.

The shooting came less than a week after a man opened fire at several locations in Michigan, leaving six people dead and two severely wounded.

Eleven of the people wounded in Thursday’s attack were taken to hospital where one was in critical condition, five were in serious condition, and five were in fair condition. The conditions of the others were not available.

Walton said his office served the suspect with the protection from abuse order at around 3.30pm, which was about 90 minutes before the first shooting.

Such orders are usually filed because there is some type of violence in a relationship, but he did not disclose the nature of the relationship in question.

While driving to the factory, the gunman shot a man on the street in a nearby town, striking him in the shoulder. A short time later, he shot someone else in the leg at an intersection.

“The shooter proceeded north to Excel Industries in Hesston, where one person was shot in the parking lot before he opened fire inside the building,” the department said in a release. “He was seen entering the building with an assault-style long gun.”

Friends, family mourn victims of Kansas shooting rampage https://t.co/JfdImvfN6Z pic.twitter.com/3PFc8nTeV9

— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) February 26, 2016