Former employee arrested after corporate shooting that left two people dead and three injured in Chester, PA

Authorities in Pennsylvania said a disgruntled employee opened fire at a laundry factory near Philadelphia on Wednesday. Two colleagues were killed and three others were injured.

Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said the shooting occurred around 8:30 a.m. when the suspect, an employee of Delaware County Lenin in Chester, Pennsylvania (about 18 miles south of Philadelphia), allegedly armed with a handgun and entered the facility with a handgun and opened fire without warning. Police said the suspect left the building after the shooting, but authorities stopped a vehicle matching the description later that morning in Trainer, Pennsylvania, near the facility. The suspect, whose name has not been publicly released, was taken into custody.

Prosecutor Stollsteimer said the workers had arrived shortly before work when the shooting occurred and that two of the workers died at the scene of the shooting, which occurred outside the building, as well as inside. Stollsteimer said: “This is a story that plays out far too often in the United States of America. (The shooting is) an absolute tragedy.” Stollsteimer said that according to the initial investigation, no one could provide an immediate motive for the shooting or foresee the possibility of the incident.

Chester Mayor Stefan Roots said: “It speaks for guns in America. Violence is always unpredictable. We don’t know what conditions people live in in a city as impoverished as ours… We can’t let guns get into the hands of the wrong people. There must have been some kind of psychological problem that would cause an employee to walk into his workplace on a workday and take out his anger in such a violent way – not just at the boss, but at his coworkers, with whom he had probably worked side by side for years.”

Chester Police Commissioner Steven Gretsky said during a news conference that one of the three people hospitalized in the shooting was in critical condition.

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