Mass Shooting: Gunman Kills 8 at FedEx Facility

On Thursday night, a former employee at a FedEx Ground facility near Indianapolis main airport shot and killed eight people and wounded several before turning the gun on himself. The gunman, identified as 19-year-old Brandon Hole, had been employed by FedEx in 2020. He had been placed in a mental health temporary hold by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department in April 2020, after his mother alerted the FBI about the state of his mental health. After an FBI assessment done at the time, authorities identified a “No Racially Motivated Violent Extremism (RMVE) ideology. A shotgun was retrieved from his room and not returned to him.

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According to eyewitnesses, Hole got out of his car and started shooting people outside the facility with a rifle, before running inside and opening fire there. He didn’t get too far into the facility. The shooting, the first major mass shooting since Boulder, Colorado earlier this year, only lasted a few minutes.

Eyewitness Laveda Chester was arriving for her overnight shift when she saw the gunman running toward the building. She stayed in her car and drove to a nearby parking lot before calling the police. Meanwhile, two employees inside the building heard as many as ten shots and escaped the building. Police arrived on the scene when the gunman had already shot himself.

On Friday morning, relatives and family gathered at a nearby hotel to await news of the employees inside the FedEx building. Many employees did not have cellphones on them while in the building so this was the only way their families could access news about them. Employees who were unharmed reunited with family members. Later that day, Indianapolis police released the names of the eight deceased victims.

Responding to the incident, President Joe Biden appealed to Congress to prioritize firearm legislation, calling gun violence an epidemic.

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