A man with a quick temper and a history of weapons arrests walked into the South Side auto parts warehouse from which he had been fired and gunned down six people Wednesday morning, cornering them all in the cluttered, cramped building that had “one way out and one way in,” police said.
Salvador Tapia, 36, of Burbank died in a shootout with police deep in the recesses of the warehouse after Hostage and Barricade Team officers rushed the building in hopes of saving victims who lay dying during a standoff of nearly an hour.
The six dead included two of the shop’s owners–brothers in their 50s from the North Shore–one of their sons, and three other employees at Windy City Core Supply, 3912 S. Wallace St. Another employee, whom Tapia allegedly tied up after he arrived in the middle of the shooting, was able to free himself and escape while the gunman stalked the back passageways of the building–with a semiautomatic handgun and two clips of ammunition–firing on more people.
A third owner of the small business escaped the shooting because he was delayed in arriving at work. He had taken his daughter to school and was caught in traffic on the Eisenhower Expressway coming in from his west suburban home, according to police and his wife.
The slayings were the worst workplace shooting in Chicago in recent memory. In 2001, four workers at the Navistar International Corp. plant in Melrose Park were killed by a former employee one day before he was to start a prison term for stealing parts from the company.
Windy City fired Tapia in March, according to police, who said they did not know what sparked his rampage months later. He had threatened one of the owners in a series of phone calls since his termination for “not showing up for work and causing trouble at work,” said acting police Supt. Phil Cline.
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The employee who survived the shooting arrived about 8:35 a.m. to find one body inside the doorway and four more in the office to his left. Tapia confronted him at gunpoint and tied him up with a piece of rope, Cline said.
Tapia then went back into one of the passageways of the building, which was packed with storage containers holding used auto parts. The bound employee heard more shots fired and then was able to escape.
As he ran out he met another employee coming to work, and the two ran to a corner restaurant and called police, Cline said. A truck driver, Jozef Gruszka, was waiting to pick up a shipment of parts at the warehouse and met the fleeing men.
“The guy ran out from the side of the building with his hands tied behind his back,” Gruszka said. “He told me to call police and that’s what I did. . . . He said, `He’s crazy and he’s shooting everybody inside.'”
Within minutes eight police officers from the Deering District arrived and exchanged gunfire with Tapia, Cline said. When the first officers on the scene attempted to enter the building, Tapia fired three shots at them and they took cover behind their squad cars.
Witness Jerry George, 60, said he was watching from across the street as police lined up on the stairs leading to the door, which a female officer attempted to open. As she did so, shots came through the door, he said.
“He shot and they all fell off the stairs, jumped off the stairs,” George said. “He was sticking his arm outside the door and shooting.”
With the police behind their cars, Tapia came outside and ignored the officers’ demand for him to drop his gun, Cline said. He fired again at police and they fired back as he went back inside the building. A minute later Tapia came back out and exchanged fire with police again, Cline said.
At that point, about 30 Hostage and Barricade Team officers arrived. Cline said he also arrived and, hearing there were at least five victims with gunshot wounds, ordered the HBT officers “to make an assault on the building.”
As police stormed the building, they were greeted by a grisly scene. The first body was lying near the front door, in a narrow main hallway.
“There’s really only one way out and one way in other than overhead doors,” Cline said. “Basically most of the people were shot in the office area, which is right inside the front door. Another was found farther in the warehouse, shot, more toward the back. Once [Tapia was] inside and by the front door, he’s got them cornered.”
Witnesses said officers swarmed over the building once they entered. While some police picked their way through the warehouse, others covered the roof.
“It was very hard for our HBT officers because it’s a warehouse of used engine parts and there are just hundreds of 55-gallon drums filled with these engine parts,” Cline said. “There were crates and steel containers and there’s very little room to maneuver in there. You have to go down all kinds of little passageways and that’s where he was hiding, behind one of those boxes.”
Officers found Tapia toward the back of the warehouse, hiding amid the rows of barrels of parts. He “refused to drop his weapon and an HBT officer shot him,” Cline said. A police source said Tapia was shot through the chin.
Police handcuffed Tapia and took him to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The Cook County medical examiner’s office identified the slain employees as Howard Weiner, 59, of Northbrook; his brother Alan Weiner, 50, of Wilmette; Howard Weiner’s son Daniel, 30, of Chicago’s North Side; and three South Side residents: Robert Lee Taylor, 53; Juan Valles, 34; and Calvin Ramsey, 44.
Cline said that when police entered the building they found signs of life in two of the victims. After the shootout with the gunman, paramedics transported three wounded, including Tapia, to hospitals. Tapia and one of the victims were pronounced dead at Stroger Hospital, and another victim was pronounced dead at Mercy Hospital. The other four victims were pronounced dead at the scene.
The third partner in the business, Robert Bruggeman, of Elmwood Park, did not make it to the office until after the shooting, his wife said.
Helen Bruggeman said her husband was taking his daughter to school when the shootings took place. By the time he arrived at the building, it was surrounded by police officers, who wouldn’t tell him what was going on, she said.
He called his wife to see what she heard.
“I told him there’s a possibility his partners were gone–and he broke down,” she said. “It’s a nightmare. It’s just a nightmare.”
Over the last 11 years, Tapia had a dozen run-ins with police over his violent behavior toward others. Of his 12 arrests, most were for menacing either his girlfriend or members of his family with a handgun. His former girlfriend said he had a vicious temper, especially when he was drunk. He had not had a valid driver’s license since 1998, when he was arrested for drunken driving.
Because Tapia was a convicted felon, he was prohibited from owning the .380-caliber semiautomatic Walther PP he used in Wednesday’s massacre.
Other than the phone threats he made against the business owners since he was fired, police said Tapia had no contact with his former employers since leaving the business.
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Inside the warehouse, police found numerous blood smears near the bodies that appeared to have been left by Tapia, a police source said, but it was unclear whether he was attempting to make some kind of marks or just wiping blood from his hands.
Two police officers were taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital and treated for ringing in their ears after being involved in the shootout inside the cramped warehouse, said a spokesman for the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communication.