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'Wish I knew': Crucial question as FedEx shooting details emerge

More details have emerged about the teenage gunman who opened fire at a FedEx site killing eight people.

The 19-year-old gunman, who opened fire at the FedEx site in Indianapolis in the US state of Indiana, was a former employee with a history of mental illness that led to his detention by law enforcement last year, police and FBI officials said on Friday.

The incident – the latest in a spate of at least seven deadly mass shootings in the United States over the past month – unfolded at a FedEx operations centre near Indianapolis International Airport after 11pm (local time) on Thursday, police said.

Brandon Hole, 19, is pictured.
Brandon Hole, 19, has been named as the man responsible for the FedEx shooting. Source: ABC

It lasted only a couple of minutes and was over by the time police responded to the scene, Craig McCartt, the Indianapolis police department's deputy chief, told a news briefing on Friday.

Crucial question after horrific shooting

Witnesses described a chaotic attack, as the gunman opened fire with a rifle in the parking lot before entering the facility and continuing to shoot, leaving victims both inside and outside the building.

Officers found the suspect dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

A FedEx spokeswoman and police identified the gunman as Brandon Hole, a former employee at the facility.

Deputy Chief McCartt told reporters the suspect was believed to have last worked at the plant in the fall of 2020.

Asked what brought him back to the facility on Thursday night, McCartt replied: "I wish I could answer that."

Investigators are on the scene following a mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis.
Eight people died after a man opened fire at this FedEx facility. Source: AAP

Mum's concerns about son

The FBI said the suspect had been placed under a temporary mental health detention by Indianapolis police in March 2020 after his mother contacted law enforcement to report he might try to take his own life.

A shotgun was seized from his residence then, and based on "items observed in the suspect's bedroom at that time," he was interviewed by the FBI in April 2020, FBI Indianapolis Special Agent in Charge Paul Keenan said in a statement.

"No racially motivated violent extremism ideology" was identified during that assessment, and no criminal violation was found, but the shotgun was not returned to the suspect, Mr Keenan said.

Family members await information about their loved ones who work at the FedEx facility after a mass casualty shooting in Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.
Family members wait to hear news about their loved ones after the shooting. Source: Reuters

The massacre is the most recent in a series of US mass shootings that has again pushed the issue of gun violence to the political foreground.

Indianapolis – the capital of the Midwestern state of Indiana – alone has seen two mass shootings this year.

In January, police say a teenager shot and killed four family members and a pregnant woman.

Thursday's gun violence at the FedEx centre was the second mass shooting in recent weeks targeting workplaces employing a high concentration of people of Asian descent.

Although none of the victims in Indianapolis have been formally identified, members of the Sikh community, whose religion originated in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, were among the dead and wounded, according to a New York-based advocacy group called the Sikh Coalition.

A body is taken from the scene where multiple people were shot at a FedEx Ground facility in Indianapolis.
A body is taken from the scene on Friday. Source: AAP

Separately, an Indianapolis Star reporter wrote on Twitter that the city's police chief was told by the Sikh community that the majority of employees at the FedEx site are Sikh.

The coalition, which describes itself as the largest Sikh civil rights organisation in the United States, said it expected authorities to "conduct a full investigation — including the possibility of bias as a factor".

The coalition's executive director, Satjeet Kaur, said more than 8,000 Sikh-Americans live in Indiana.

The recent surge in US mass shootings began on March 16 when a gunman shot eight people to death, including six Asian woman, at three Atlanta-area day spas before he was arrested.

That rampage heightened tensions already brewing over a rise in hate crimes and discrimination directed at Asian Americans in recent years, stoked in part by racially inflammatory rhetoric about the coronavirus pandemic's origins in China.

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