Shooting suspect had criminal record in 2 states

– Around 3:30 p.m.: Someone from the Harvey County sheriff’s office goes to the plant and serves Ford with a protection from abuse order. When the shooter entered the plant, Rankin had in his safety earplugs and didn’t pay much attention to the loud popping sound he heard until a coworker told him to start running.

Higbee had been working as a welder at the plant for a little under a year, his sister-in-law, LaShonda Hinson said Friday.

Walton reported that three or four people, in addition to the shooter, may have been killed.

“Once a week we have these shootings, and it doesn’t dominate the news”.

Walton said Friday, before Schroeder was identified, that Ford would have kept shooting if an officer had not stopped him. The first person Ford shot was a man driving with his two children, Walton said. Armed with a pistol and a long gun, authorities said, the shooter killed three inside the factory before he was fatally shot by a police officer. Numerous students and faculty had family and friends who work at Excel.

Nearby Hesston college was put on lockdown during the shooting, the school said on its website.

A police officer then confronted him and shot him dead.

The affidavit filed in the case alleges Hopkins knew Ford was a convicted felon when she gave him a Zastava Serbia, AK-47 semi-automatic rifle and a Glock Model 22 40-caliber handgun, the Justice Department said.

Dennis Britton Sr. says his son, Dennis Britton Jr., said he stepped away from his welding bay Thursday at the Excel Industries lawnmower parts factory in Hesston when somebody hollered at him. “I saw the shell casings come out of the assault rifle”, he said.

Cedric Larry Ford, the suspected culprit in a mass shooting in Hesston, Kansas on Thursday, had apparently posted videos and pictures of himself online posing with high-powered weapons, according to news reports.

Down the street at Subway, Aaron Smith, 26, remembered routinely serving Cedric Ford, the shooter, a bacon cheeseburger and cheese tots in his night job at Sonic and, on some days, a cherry limeade.

“He yelled ‘hey!’, then boom, boom, boom”, said Matt Jarrell.

“We always say it won’t happen here”. Walton said they were investigating what triggered the violence, but he stressed it was not an act of terrorism. “He then got me to ground while choking me-finally releasing me”.

About 5 p.m. a call comes in to 911 about a shooting near 12th and Meridian in Newton, about six miles from the factory.

These incidents keep law enforcement agencies continuing to learn and change training methods.

“It’s normal when someone gets served a protection of abuse order” to be upset, Walton said this morning, explaining that Ford’s behavior wasn’t abnormal when he was served.