Report: Gunman opens fire at power company office in St. Louis, shoots 3; conditions unknown

Man shoots 3 at Mo. office; conditions unknown

ST. LOUIS — A man with an assault rifle walked into a power company Thursday and shot at least three people, police said. Officers surrounded the building as they searched for the gunman.

The shooting occurred around 6:30 a.m. at the ABB Power plant on the city’s north side and three hours later, police believed the gunman was still in the building. Details about the victims and their conditions were not immediately known.

Swiss-based ABB Group makes power transmission and industrial automation equipment. The company manufactures transformers at the St. Louis site, according to its Web site. It wasn’t immediately known how many people work at the plant.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch Web site, citing dispatcher reports, said some employees ran to the rooftop to escape the gunfire, while others hid in interior rooms. The Web site said dispatchers described the gunman as wearing a tan coat and carrying a semiautomatic weapon.

Dozens of emergency vehicles circled the sprawling plant on a day made more chaotic by several inches of snow that has snarled traffic in the St. Louis region and below-zero wind chills.

ABB has operations in roughly 100 countries, employing about 120,000 people. Last October, ABB reported third-quarter earnings of more than $1 billion.

Phone messages and e-mails from The Associated Press to Thomas Schmidt, an ABB corporate spokesman in Zurich, Switzerland, were not immediately returned Thursday.

Calls to the St. Louis business went unanswered Thursday morning. The plant is near Interstate 70 and Kingshighway in a busy part of the city. Police closed about a 3-mile stretch of Interstate 70 near the plant.

Associated Press writer Jim Suhr contributed to this report.