‘Your loved ones are forever written in the pages of Aurora history’: Ceremony marks 5th anniversary of mass shooting
Feb. 15, 2019, the unthinkable happened in Aurora: A man, upset because he was about to be fired from his job, shot five of his co-workers to death.
Thursday night, Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin told their survivors that he wants the city to remember the men as more than victims.
And so Irvin declared that forevermore, each of their birthdays is now their day. It begins Wednesday with Russell Beyer day, the day he would have turned 53.
Irvin made the announcement at a ceremony Thursday evening, where the city also unveiled a memorial granite bench, to be installed outside the Aurora Police Department.
“Your loved ones are forever written in the pages of Aurora history. Their names are forever inscribed in the hearts of the community,” Irvin said.
The shooting
The massacre happened shortly after 1 p.m. at the Henry Pratt Co. plant on Archer Avenue.
The shooter, a 45-year-old Aurora resident, was meeting with company officials and two union representatives. He was about to be fired, according to police.
He and the men were in a small room. He shot plant manager Josh Pinkard, of Oswego; human resources manager Clayton Parks, of Elgin; human resources intern Trevor Wehner of Sheridan; and union chairman Russell Beyer, killing them all. He also shot union steward Timothy Williams, then left the room and shot co-worker Vicente Juarez, of Oswego, to death near a loading dock.
Pinkard, Parks, Wehner, Beyer and Juarez were killed.
The gunman then shot at police, injuring five of them. Another suffered a non-gunshot injury.
Police chased him throughout the building, cornered him and shot him to death.
The families
Representatives of each family joined Irvin to receive plaques. Only one spoke — Emily Pinkard, Josh Pinkard’s daughter. She recalled how one of her favorite things to do each day as a child was to wait at the door for her father to return from work. “I planned to do the same thing Feb. 15, 2019,” she said.
“My father was a kind, loving, godly man,” she said. “He loved his job, his family, his friends,” she said.
First responders
Aurora Fire Chief David McCabe recalled how just the year before the department had undergone training on how to respond to active-shooter situations.
“We never thought this level of evil would ever appear in our city. We were wrong,” McCabe said.
The police and fire departments have received hundreds of requests from departments across the country to teach about what they learned from the shooting. The last slide in the presentation is always one bearing the names of the five victims, McCabe said.
“We make sure the memories of your loved ones continue on,” McCabe said.
The officers who were injured returned to duty. Three have since retired.
Pratt closed the plant in March 2022.