ILJERSEY-L Archives

From: Mary Ann Kaylor <>
Subject: [ILJERSEY-L] Shooting at FHL in SLC
Date: Thu, 15 Apr 1999 17:32:32 -0500

Copied and pasted this from CNN URL:

Gunman, two others
dead in shooting at
Mormon church library

April 15, 1999
Web posted at: 3:05 PM EDT
(1905 GMT)

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) --
A gunman opened fire
Thursday at the Mormon
church's Family History
Library, killing two people
and wounding four others
before he was shot to death
by police.

Police SWAT teams were combing the building to
determine whether another gunman was inside the
building more than two hours after the 10:30 a.m. shooting
began.

Thirty people remained on the second floor and it was
feared they were being held by a second gunman. But they
later told police by telephone they had locked themselves
in a room, said Salt Lake police Lt. Phil Kirk. They were
being taken out of the building early this afternoon.

Mayor Deedee Corradini told reporters that a library
security guard and a female patron had died of their
wounds and the unidentified suspect had also died.

The gunman, who had exchanged gunfire with police, was
taken out of the building to an ambulance parked in front
of a nearby restaurant, but paramedics believed he might
be wired with an explosive and the area was evacuated.
He died in the ambulance and police Sgt. Ken Hansen
said he had no explosives.

Hansen said the four wounded included a police officer.
The wounds were not believed to be life-threatening, he
said.

Lyman Platt, a genealogist, said a gunman entered the
library and quickly fired off a dozen rounds.

"He came in the lobby and shot a lady in the head and two
or three other men," Platt said.

Said Jaqueline Nelson, a researcher who was working on
the first floor: "We heard a pop and somebody said
'Everybody get down.' There were 10 or 12 pops and
somebody yelled 'Somebody's shooting!"

Shots were fired as much as 45 minutes after officers
arrived on the scene, at first leading police to believe
there might be a second gunman.

One of the injured was a police officer.

The library, one of the world's top centers for
genealogical research, is directly across the street from
Temple Square, site of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints' Salt Lake Temple and Tabernacle.
According to a church Web site, it has more than 2 million
rolls of microfilm copies of census and other records
from more than 100 countries.

An international genealogical convention had attracted
heavy traffic to the library, which has two floors below
ground level and three above.

A KSL-TV employee, Tamara Orr, said a man matching
the description of a suspect asked her for directions to the
Family History Library earlier this morning. The man,
who appeared to be in his late 50s, was bearded and
wore disheveled clothes.

The man drove a yellow moving truck, which KSL
reported was being investigated by a police bomb squad
early this afternoon. The truck was parked near the
station, three blocks west of the history library.

The church has been involved in genealogy since its
founding nearly 170 years ago. The church amasses the
records for what it calls the baptism of the dead.
Mormons believe that such baptisms give the dead the
opportunity to join the Mormon church in the afterlife.
Mary Ann Kaylor
County Coordinator & Mail List Manager
Jersey County ILGenWeb
<http://www.rootsweb.com/~iljersey/index.html>;

Our KAYLOR/TEDROW and STEWART/ROBISON Home page:
<http://www.familytreemaker.com/users/k/a/y/Mary-Ann--Kaylor>;
KALER Mail List Owner
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