By Associated Press
ALBERTVILLE, Ala. — A worker who killed two people and wounded two more at an Alabama fire hydrant plant early Tuesday has been found dead, apparently after killing himself in a car, a police chief said.
“The person was deceased from what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” Police Chief Jamie Smith told Al.com.
The gunfire — among the latest in a spate of shootings across the U.S. — broke out about 2:30 a.m. at a Mueller Co. plant in Albertville, Smith told reporters. The gunman then got in a vehicle and left the factory. His body was found hours later inside a car in Guntersville, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) away, Smith said.
Smith says it wasn’t immediately clear what prompted the shooting.
A company representative did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Mueller Co., based in Cleveland, Tennessee, is a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Mueller Water Products Inc., which calls itself a leading maker of water distribution and measurement products in North America. More than 400 people work at the plant in Albertville, giving the city in northwest Alabama its nickname of “Fire Hydrant Capital of the World.”
“Everyone is absolutely heartbroken and devastated,” Albertville spokeswoman Robin Lathan said. “The Mueller Company is part of the lifeblood of who we are in the city of Albertville. It’s just a devastating blow.”
Albertville is a tight-knit community, and residents will come together to support relatives of those killed and injured, she said.
“I imagine there will be people in droves stepping up to help out however they can,” she said. “We always come together in times of tragedy.”
A news conference is planned for 11 a.m. at Albertville City Hall, Lathan said.
The factory shooting comes amid a torrent of gun violence nationwide that has police and criminal justice experts concerned. Within hours of the Alabama gunfire Tuesday, four women were killed and four other people were wounded in a pre-dawn shooting at a home in Chicago, police said. And the toll from this past weekend included two people killed and at least 30 others wounded in mass shootings in Chicago, the Texas capital of Austin, and Savannah, Georgia.
Law officers had hoped that a spike in U.S. homicides last year would subside as the nation emerged from coronavirus restrictions, but they remain higher than they were in pre-pandemic times.
“There was a hope this might simply be a statistical blip that would start to come down,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum. “That hasn’t happened. And that’s what really makes chiefs worry that we may be entering a new period where we will see a reversal of 20 years of declines in these crimes.”
In Alabama, a maintenance worker from North Carolina arrived at the plant early Tuesday, unaware of the deadly shooting hours earlier. John McFalls said he spent five days in the plant last week and saw nothing out of the ordinary.
“Everyone here was friendly,” he told Al.com. “Radios playing, everybody getting along.”
He swallowed hard as he heard what had happened, the news site reported.
“I was thinking about coming in early this morning and getting the jump on everything,” McFalls said. “It’s kind of shocking, and then it isn’t, given the state of the world.”