[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 35 (Tuesday, February 26, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1451-S1452]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                  Aurora, Illinois, Warehouse Shooting

  Madam President, today is February 26. Eleven days ago, on Friday, 
February 15, an angry man with a history of violence and a Smith & 
Wesson .40 caliber pistol opened fire on his coworkers and police 
officers at a warehouse in Aurora, IL, about 40 miles from the city of 
Chicago.
  In a matter of just a few minutes, five of this man's coworkers at 
the Henry Pratt Company were dead. He then shot and wounded five police 
officers who rushed to the scene. An hour and a half later, he died in 
an exchange of gunfire with other policemen.
  The day before this horrible incident marked the anniversary of two 
other mass shootings: the 1-year anniversary of the Parkland, FL, 
shooting, which killed 17 high school students and staff, and the 11-
year anniversary of a shooting at Northern Illinois University that 
left 5 students dead and 17 injured.
  The gunman in the Henry Pratt warehouse massacre had just been told 
that day that he was going to be fired. His response was not just 
anger. His response was to pull out a firearm and murder five of his 
coworkers.
  I want you to meet the victims of this man's violence. This is Trevor 
Wehner. Trevor was 21 years old. He was on the dean's list of Northern 
Illinois University's business college. He was on track to graduate 
this May.
  Why was he at the Henry Pratt warehouse on that day? It was because 
he was on his first day of an internship at the business. Trevor was so 
excited about this opportunity to work at this business and to see what 
it was like to actually be in the real world that he showed up for his 
internship 45 minutes early that day. It was earlier than he should 
have. He was that excited. He died at the workplace that day.
  This is Clayton Parks. He was known as ``Clay'' to his family and 
friends. He was the human resources manager at Henry Pratt. He was also 
an alumnus of Northern Illinois University. He had been working at the 
Henry Pratt Company for 4 months. He was 32 years old. He was married 
to his wife Abby and had a beautiful little 9-month-old baby boy, Axel.
  I met them at Northern Illinois University when we held a vigil for 
Trevor and Clay that afternoon. I talked to Clay's mom for the longest 
time. She wanted to tell me his whole life story, hoping that she could 
preserve the memory of this wonderful young man and what he meant to 
her.
  Russell Beyer is over here. I went to his memorial service. He had 
been at Henry Pratt for more than 25 years. He was a mold operator and 
was the father of two grown children. He was also the chairman of the 
union at Henry Pratt.
  In a terrible twist of fate, Russell had helped the gunman get his 
job back when the company first fired him 2 months earlier. Last 
Thursday would have been Russell's 48th birthday. Instead of a birthday 
party, his family and friends gathered that day at his wake. As I went 
into the funeral home in Montgomery, IL, I was struck by this fact. It 
turns out that the family decided that since Russell was such a 
passionate football fan, everybody should wear NFL jerseys. The room 
was filled with members of his family remembering him and paying 
tribute to him by wearing jerseys of all of the different teams they 
supported. Russell was a Patriots fan. He wore a Patriots jersey in his 
casket on the day that would have been his 48th birthday.
  Vicente Juarez was a stockroom attendant and a forklift operator. He 
had been at Henry Pratt for 13 years, since the year 2006. Mr. Juarez 
and his wife of 38 years lived in a home in Oswego with their three 
grown children and eight grandchildren--all under one roof.
  I will not forget that scene at the funeral home, either, because the 
family had decided that everyone would wear a T-shirt. It was a black 
T-shirt with a color photograph of Vicente in front of it and one of 
his favorite sayings on the back of it. There they were--grandchildren, 
children, older folks--all wearing those black T-shirts in honor and 
memory of this man.

  I met his sister. His sister told me a story that Vicente was part of 
the family who immigrated to Illinois in 1972. There were five boys and 
five girls. They didn't have any money. Their father died 6 years after 
they immigrated. Yet they struggled and worked and stuck together as a 
family. That beautiful family--that beautiful family--had to shoulder 
this tragedy, where this gunman walked into that warehouse and killed 
Vicente.
  Josh Pinkard's photograph is here. He was the plant manager. He 
joined Henry Pratt's parent company 13 years ago at a facility in his 
native Alabama. He and his wife had moved to Illinois with their three 
little kids last spring. As he lay dying, Josh pulled out his cell 
phone and texted his wife. His message was this: ``I love you. I've 
been shot at work.'' He died shortly thereafter. Josh Pinkard was 37 
years old.
  How did the police respond to this mass shooting? Every on-duty 
member of the Aurora Police Department rushed to the scene, where they 
were joined quickly by off-duty members of the police department. Then, 
once the word got out that a policeman had been injured, hundreds of 
other policemen, firefighters, and other first responders all came to 
the scene.
  I was on the phone with the Aurora police chief, Kristen Ziman. 
Kristen put out a statement, which I commended her for. It was the most 
eloquent statement. It said many things, but I want to repeat what it 
said. She said: ``Every time an officer was hit, another one went in. 
No one retreated.''
  All told, five members of the Aurora Police Department were injured 
by gunfire: Officer Adam Miller, Officer Marco Gomez, Officer John 
Cebulski, Officer James Zegar, and Officer Reynaldo Rivera. A sixth 
officer, Diego Avila, suffered a knee injury. They and hundreds of 
other police officers and first responders who rushed to the scene are 
heroes. Simply put, they are heroes. Their quick and courageous 
response certainly saved other lives.
  Here is the cruel irony and tragedy beyond the loss of life. The 
gunman should never have had a begun. In 1995, this gunman pleaded 
guilty in the State of Mississippi to charges that he had beaten a 
former girlfriend with a baseball bat and stabbed her with a knife. He 
was sentenced to 5 years in prison. He served 3.
  In January of 2014--19 years later--he applied for an Illinois 
firearm owner's identification card. He lied on that application. He 
said he had no felony record, and he was given permission under 
Illinois law to buy a firearm. He got away with that lie because the 
State of Mississippi had failed to submit his conviction record to the 
FBI's criminal background check system. He wasn't in the computer as 
being disqualified.
  In March 2014, this man bought a handgun from a gun dealer in Aurora. 
Two weeks later, he applied for a concealed carry permit. This time he 
slipped up. He voluntarily submitted his fingerprints in the hopes that 
his concealed carry permit would be expedited. Those fingerprints 
finally exposed his felony record in Mississippi and his violent past.
  The Illinois State Police got word of it, rejected his concealed 
carry application, revoked his firearm owner's identification card, and 
sent him a letter saying that he needed to surrender the Smith & Wesson 
firearm, which he used to kill these five innocent people and to injure 
these policemen. Obviously, he never surrendered the weapon. It was 
that same weapon that he used to kill these innocent people and to 
injure these policemen.
  Almost 7 years ago, a disturbed young man opened fire in a movie 
theater in a suburb of Denver, killing 12 people and injuring 70 
others. The name of that suburb was Aurora--Aurora, CO.
  In a sad commentary on how frequent mass shootings have become in 
this great Nation, the police chief of

[[Page S1452]]

Aurora, CO, tweeted after the killings in Aurora, IL: ``Months from 
now, as people talk about the mass shooting in Aurora, someone will 
ask, ``Which Aurora mass shooting are you talking about?''
  Mass shootings have become too common in America. They make the news, 
but tens of thousands of Americans die every year from gun violence, 
and many of those deaths are barely reported or noted. They die in 
suicides and gun accidents, alone or in small groups, in domestic 
disturbances, in gang disputes, and in crossfire.
  I am honored to represent the city of Chicago, but my heart breaks to 
know that last year more than 2,700 people were injured or killed by 
gun violence in that great city.
  Let's face it, America is confronting an epidemic of gun violence. We 
need thoughts and prayers, but we need so much more. We need action to 
do something.
  Do the lives of these policemen mean anything? Of course, they do. 
They mean a great deal to their families, and they mean a great deal to 
this Nation.
  Do the lives of these victims who died mean anything? I met the 
families--four of them. They are heartbroken, and their lives will 
never be the same.
  We need action to close the deadly gaps in America's gun background 
check system. Much of the work needs to take place at the State level. 
State and local law enforcement agencies are investigating how this 
tragedy might have been prevented and how to prevent another violent 
felon from slipping through the cracks in the system.
  We also have a responsibility here. It is not enough for a moment of 
silence. It is not enough for prayers to be offered. We need to do more 
to keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have them.
  This week, the House of Representatives will vote on a measure to 
close the gun show and internet loopholes in our background check 
system. These loopholes make a mockery of the law, which says we want 
to make sure that no dangerous person buys a firearm or keeps a firearm 
in America. It is critically important, and I support the House's 
effort, but, sadly, I have to predict that this measure will not even 
come up for a debate--let alone a vote--in this Republican-controlled 
Senate. There is just no way that they will consider any gun safety 
measure.
  After Columbine and nearly every mass shooting and natural disaster 
since, a carpenter who lives in Illinois has crafted wooden memorials 
to honor the fallen.
  His name is Greg Zanis, 68 years old. In 20 years, he has made and 
delivered--listen to this--more than 26,274 handmade wooden crosses, 
Stars of David, and crescent moons to communities across this country.
  Greg drove to Sandy Hook, CT, after 26 first graders and educators 
were murdered in their grade school. He drove to Las Vegas after 58 
people were killed at a music festival. He drove to the First Baptist 
Church in Sutherland Springs, TX, after 26 worshipers were killed. He 
drove to Pittsburgh, PA, to honor the 11 worshipers killed at the Tree 
of Life synagogue.
  Even after all that tragedy, the mass murder at Henry Pratt hit Greg 
Zanis especially hard. You see, Greg Zanis's hometown is Aurora, IL. 
Mr. Zanis told a reporter from the New York Times that he could drive 
away from all of the other tragedies, but he said: ``I am not going to 
be able to get away from this one.''
  To those who will say that the aftermath of a mass shooting is not 
the time to talk about gun safety, I have one simple question: When is 
the right time to talk about gun safety? If we are going to talk about 
it only on the days when no one dies in America because of the use of 
guns, then, of course, we will never talk about it.
  Will you wait until this killing comes to your community, your 
church, your kid's school? Is that what it will take before Members of 
the Senate and the people across this Nation feel as Greg Zanis does, 
that you just can't escape this carnage anymore? I pray that is not the 
case.
  We need to work together. Let's start. Let's do something sensible 
and bipartisan in the name of gun safety to make our background check 
systems as effective as they can be.
  Look at those faces. Eleven days ago, they were alive, part of a 
family, loved--sons, fathers, grandfathers--and now they are gone 
because one man who never should have owned a gun took it to work in a 
fit of anger and killed these five men. It is time for this Senate and 
this Congress to do something.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, what is the legislative situation?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The pending question is on the Miller 
nomination.
  Mr. LEAHY. I thank the Presiding Officer.
  I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.