Police stand near where a man opened fire at the factory, killing three people
(Picture: AP)A gunman opened fire on his colleagues at a factory in the US state of Maryland on Thursday, killing at least three people and leaving a fourth seriously injured.
He was taken into custody after a shoot-out with police.
The 23-year-old attacker, whose identity has not been released by authorities, was wounded in an exchange of gunfire with a Maryland state trooper while trying to escape in a car, Washington County Sheriff Douglas Mullendore told a news conference.
Both the suspect and trooper were taken to a local hospital for treatment of gunshot wounds after the shooting at Columbia Machine, Inc, the latest in a series of mass shootings to plague the US.
Sheriff Mullendore declined to comment on any possible motives behind the attack but said the gunman and all of his victims were employees of the factory in northern Maryland near the Pennsylvania state line.
He said the shooter used a semi-automatic pistol in the attack..
The deceased have been named by police as Mark Alan Frye, 50, Charles Edward Minnick Jr., 31, and Joshua Robert Wallace, aged 30.
A Columbia Machine spokesperson told Reuters the company was cooperating with authorities in their probe into the shooting but declined to comment further.
The company supplies concrete manufacturing equipment around the world, according to its website.
It comes after last month’s mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where an 18-year-old man opened fire at an elementary school, killing 19 students and two teachers.
The killings in Uvalde, and a mass shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York days earlier that left 10 people dead, have prompted a fresh push to enact stricter federal gun control laws in the country.
