3 Years After Henry Pratt Company Shooting In Aurora, Officials Are Pleased With Progress In Closing FOID Card System Loopholes The Incident Exposed
AURORA, Ill. (CBS) -- Three years ago Tuesday, Gary Martin opened fire at the Henry Pratt Company in Aurora – killing five of his coworkers and injuring five police officers.
Russell Beyer, Vicente Juarez, Clayton Parks, Josh Pinkard, and Trevor Werner all lost their lives that day.
The Kane County State's Attorney's office said Martin, 45, was being fired for a security violation at the time he opened fire at the business. Martin was killed in a shootout with police.
The Henry Pratt shooting exposed major loopholes in the Illinois Firearm Owners Identification Card system. Three years later, CBS 2 Investigator Megan Hickey checked on the progress made to close those gaps.
Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly said, "the work is never done," but he also said he is proud of the progress they have made. In particular, he cited the fact that last year alone, ISP stopped over 25,000 attempts by people illegally trying to get guns.
"It is not a foolproof system," Kelly said. "There are evil people in the world who will do everything they can to find a firearm, one way or another."
In the days following the tragedy at the Aurora manufacturing plant, the failures that allowed Martin to shoot and kill five people that day became obvious.
Chief among them was that the shooter should have given up his .40-caliber Smith & Wesson in 2014 when ISP discovered a felony conviction — but he didn't.
"So the focus that we have prioritized over the past three years now is not necessarily getting back some piece of plastic; a FOID card," Kelly said. "Our focus has been on identifying those people that are the greatest threat to public safety."
Kelly points to enhanced enforcement. He said ISP revoked over 70 percent more Firearm Owners Identification cards in 2021 than in 2019, with 17,457 cards revoked last year.
Another improvement has been record-sharing — which used to be largely paper-based.
Kristen Ziman was Aurora's Chief of Police during the mass shooting.
"February 15, 2019, was the worst day of my professional career," Ziman said.
She said it also changed her career path. She has since left law enforcement, and is now focusing on changing cultures through speaking and consulting.
"When I say that we are tripping over red flags, look at nearly every mass shooting," Ziman said. "We connect the dots backwards and we say, 'Wow, we saw those signs, and we didn't do the thing that needed to be done.'"
Martin had told a co-worker the morning of the shooting that if he was fired, he was going to kill people. Ziman said employees everywhere still need to focus on speaking up and identifying safety threats.
Director Kelly said ISP created a firearms web portal as a direct result of the mass shooting, and it allows better information sharing between law enforcement agencies.
Currently, there are 779 Illinois law enforcement agencies using that web portal.
