Hesston College was placed on lockdown due to what police called an “active shooter” event.
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The suspect wasn’t immediately identified.
The governor says Schroeder didn’t wait for backup and “seized the situation”.
According to Schroeder’s LinkedIn page, he’s been chief of Hesston since 1998. Authorities are looking there, taking photographs and other evidence from the shooting scenes, and conducting “a lot of interviews” in Harvey County and Wichita to get to the bottom of this nightmare.
Walton said at a news conference Thursday night that four people were killed, including the gunman.at the Excel Industries plant in Hesston. Officers shot and killed Ford at the scene.
On Facebook, Ford said he was a single man and a native of Miami who lived in Newton, Kan. A short time later, another person was shot in the leg at an intersection.
“There was particular law enforcement here in Hesston that responded right away”.
Several employees at the plant told local media they believed that the shooter had emotional and mental problems. She said that five victims were in serious condition and two were in fair condition.
The Kansas shootings and this weekend’s killing of six in Kalamazoo, Michigan, also rattled President Barack Obama, who lamented Friday that “two more communities in America (have been) torn apart by grief”.
Excel Industries was founded there in 1960.
A co-worker at the facility said he was unloading pallets in the back of the building when he heard “a pop, pop”.
The entire tableau lasted only 26 minutes, from the time the gunman shot a person and stole a truck until he was killed at Excel shortly after 5 p.m. (6 p.m. ET). A police officer shot and killed Ford during a shootout. He said the man traveled between sites firing from a vehicle before reaching the plant.
“We have so many crime scenes”, Harvey County Sheriff T. Walton said at a news briefing Thursday evening in Hesston, where the incidents ended at Excel Industries, a lawn care company.
The woman, in a written petition for protection from abuse that was filed February 5, said Ford “placed me in a choke hold from behind – I couldn’t breathe”. He said he saw Ford pull into the parking lot in a Dodge full-size pickup – not the truck Ford had just bought.
“He just parked and then opened up the door, hopped out with the gun on, strapped-up and everything”, Jarrell said.
Ford had left work early without explanation before showing up hours later with a rifle, according to a co-worker.
Authorities say, Ford, 38, who stormed into a Kansas factory on Thursday, Feb. 25, where he worked and shot several people, had just been served with a protective order that probably triggered the attack.
According to the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, Ford was arrested in 2000 by Pembroke Pines police for auto break-ins and then again in 2004 by Broward County deputies for parole violations.
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Hesston, with about 3,700 residents, is about 35 miles north of Wichita.
