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[h=4]Kansas gunman served court order 90 minutes before rampage[/h]Authorities said the court order to protect another individual from abuse likely set off the gunman, who killed three people and wounded 14 others.
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Authorities in south-central Kansas say a gunman with an 'assault-style' weapon killed three people and wounded more than a dozen, before a police officer shot and killed him. All of the dead were in a factory where the gunman worked. (Feb. 26) AP
Police guard the front door of Excel Industries in Hesston, Kan., Thursday, Feb. 25, 2016, where a gunman killed an undetermined number of people and injured many more.(Photo: Fernando Salazar, AP)
Authorities served a<span style="color: Red;">*</span>gunman with a court order 90 minutes before he<span style="color: Red;">*</span>opened fire at the Kansas factory where he worked, a move that<span style="color: Red;">*</span>likely set<span style="color: Red;">*</span>off the rampage that left three people dead and 14 wounded,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Harvey County Sheriff T. Walton said Friday.
The sheriff's office<span style="color: Red;">*</span>issued the order about 3:30 p.m. Thursday<span style="color: Red;">*</span>to protect another individual from abuse, Walton said. Such orders are typically<span style="color: Red;">*</span>served "because there's some type of violence in a relationship," he added.
Walton identified the gunman at a news conference Friday as<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Cedric Ford, 38, who worked at Excel Industries, a plant in Hesston that makes lawn-mower products. The dead were all killed inside the building, and were chosen at random, Walton told reporters Thursday.
USA TODAY
Kansas shooter talked guns, 'God is good' on Facebook
Hesston Police Department Sgt. Chris Carter was off-duty when the shooting began<span style="color: Red;">*</span>but was one of the first officers to arrive on the scene. Walton called him a "hero" for loading<span style="color: Red;">*</span>one of the victims, who had been shot in the parking lot, into his pickup to get him help.
“What crossed my mind was finding the bad buy, protecting everyone else who was there," Carter said about<span style="color: Red;">*</span>arriving at the plant where some of his relatives work.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>“Overwhelming. But we’re on auto-pilot. We’re trained for these. We just do what we’re trained to do."
Eleven of the wounded<span style="color: Red;">*</span>were taken to two Wichita hospitals, Via Christi Hospital St. Francis and Wesley Medical Center,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>where one was in critical condition, five in serious condition and five in fair condition Friday morning, hospital officials told the Associated Press.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>The others were taken to a hospital in nearby Newton, and their conditions were not immediately available, according to AP.
The shootings began about 5 p.m. as the gunman drove toward the plant. He opened fire and shot<span style="color: Red;">*</span>a man in another car, wounding him in the shoulder. Another person was shot in the leg at an intersection a short time later. The gunman was firing a .223-caliber long gun and also had a pistol, Walton said.
Walton said there were about four or five crime scenes in Newton, Harvey County<span style="color: Red;">*</span>and Excel.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Police killed the suspect when he began firing on officers. The shooter was dead by 5:23 p.m. Walton described the officer who took him<span style="color: Red;">*</span>down as<span style="color: Red;">*</span>“a hero as far as I’m concerned.”
"Gunfire was exchanged between<span style="color: Red;">*</span>law enforcement and the shooter, and law enforcement shot and killed the shooter," Walton said.
Police were interviewing 200 people in connection with the case.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>The FBI; the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the Kansas Bureau of Investigation; state highway patrol; Harvey County sheriff’s office; Hesston and Newton police are all investigating, Walton said.
“I heard some popping noises, but I thought it was just a drill,” Tim Kasper, a laser operator at Excel, told The Kansas City Star. “Then I heard a three-round burst, and I knew it was something real,” he added.
“I got out of there quick. People were running and panicking. It was chaos.”
Ford was accused of assault by a woman who identified herself in Sedgwick County court records as his live-in girlfriend, according to the Wichita Eagle.
The woman, in a written petition for protection from abuse that was filed Feb. 5, said Ford “placed me in a choke hold from behind – I couldn’t breathe.”
“He is an alcoholic, violent, depressed,” she wrote in her petition, in capital letters, according to the Wichita Eagle. “It’s my belief he is in desperate need of medical & psychological help!”
Walton said Ford was upset when he received the protective order at work, but that recipients are often upset in those circumstances.
“He didn’t display anything that was outrageous," Walton said.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>“He just displayed that he was upset with this order."
Public records show Ford has several previous offenses in Florida over the last decade, including burglary, grand theft and fleeing from an officer, according to AP.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Online records show he was released from the custody of the Florida Department of Corrections in February 2007, AP said.
In Kansas, he had a misdemeanor conviction in a 2008 fighting or brawling case and various traffic violations from 2014 and 2015, according to AP.
Law enforcement vehicles surrounded the suspect’s home in a trailer park in Newton later Thursday night. The Harvey County Sheriff’s Department initially said they believed the suspect’s roommate could be inside but authorities later said<span style="color: Red;">*</span>no one was there.
Paul Mullet, the president and CEO of Excel Industries, confirmed the gunman worked at the firm, KAKE reported.
“We’re really saddened by this horrific event and our heart goes out to all of our employees, all the families whose loved ones got injured or killed, and we’re going to do what we can to take care of them and bring them through this tragedy,” he said, according to the broadcaster.
The company employs 1,000 people and about 150 of them were on the job at the time, according to Walton.
Hesston is about 36 miles northwest of Wichita.
Excel Industries is a family-owned business founded in 1960, according to The<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Kansas City Star.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>The company is a leading maker of turf-care products and distributes its mowing products through Hustler Turf Equipment and BigDog Mower product lines, according to<span style="color: Red;">*</span>the company's website.
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