Eight dead in FedEx warehouse shooting in Indianapolis

The shooting was reported at the FedEx facility on Mirabel Road, Indianapolis

At least eight people died in a shooting at a FedEx warehouse in Indianapolis late Thursday, and the gunman was believed to have taken his own life, the police said.

Officer Genae Cook of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department told reporters Friday morning that there were “multiple people with injuries consistent with gunshot wounds” as a result of the shooting, and that eight people had died.

Cook said there was no active threat to the community because the assailant was believed to have died by suicide.

She asked people who had been unable to make contact with family members who work at FedEx to gather at a Holiday Inn Express about a mile from the warehouse, adding that representatives of the chaplain’s office of the police department would be there to assist them.

At about 2:45 a.m. Friday, the mood was sombre at the hotel, where about 110 people anxiously waited for news. FedEx employees are not allowed to use their phones on the floor of the warehouse, so those gathered had not heard from their loved ones.

The FedEx warehouse where the shooting occurred is on the city’s southwest side, near the airport. The highway exit was blocked off by law enforcement vehicles.

“We are aware of the tragic shooting at our FedEx Ground facility near the Indianapolis airport,” said Jim Masilak, a FedEx spokesman, in a statement early Friday. “Safety is our top priority, and our thoughts are with all those who are affected. We are working to gather more information and are cooperating with investigating authorities.”

Cook told reporters that the police had arrived at the scene just after 11 p.m., responding to a report that shots had been fired. They encountered an “active shooter incident,” she said.

Traffic on a nearby portion of Interstate 70 was briefly closed, Sgt. John Perrine of the Indiana State Police wrote on Twitter.

A reporter with WRTV, an Indianapolis station, posted an interview on Twitter with a man who said he had been at the facility when the shooting broke out and later saw a body on the floor.

WISH, another local station, quoted an employee at the warehouse, Jeremiah Miller, as saying that he had heard up to 10 shots after finishing his shift.

“This made me stand up and actually look out the entrance door, and I saw a man with a submachine gun of some sort, an automatic rifle, and he was firing in the open,” Miller told the station. “I immediately ducked down and got scared and my friend’s mother, she came in and told us to get inside the car.”

Courtney Crown, a reporter with a Fox News affiliate in Indianapolis, posted an interview with a man who said his niece had been hospitalised after being shot in the left arm when the shooting broke out.

The man, Parminder Singh, said that his niece had been sitting in a car in a nearby parking lot.

There has been a spate of mass shootings across the United States in recent weeks. In mid-March, eight people were shot to death at three massage parlors in the Atlanta area, raising fears that the crimes may have targeted people of Asian descent. Less than a week later, 10 people were killed when a gunman opened fire at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado.

At the end of March, a gunman killed four people, including a nine-year-old boy, at a real estate office in Southern California. In early April, five people, including two children, were killed by a neighbour, who was later identified as a former professional football player.