A workplace dispute on a Friday afternoon spiraled into a horrific scene of violence that left 55-year-old Ardell Edwards and five of his coworkers dead. The tragic event unfolded on July 2, 2004, at the ConAgra Foods plant in Kansas City, Kansas, when a 21-year-old employee, Elijah Brown, opened fire on his colleagues. Edwards, a male resident of Grandview, Missouri, was critically injured in the attack and succumbed to his injuries overnight at a local hospital.
The chaos began shortly
after an employee meeting that Brown had attended. Armed with two handguns he had retrieved from his locker, Brown entered the plant's break room and began shooting. Witnesses described a scene of pure pandemonium as tables were overturned and workers scrambled for cover. Brown appeared to select his targets, telling one fallen coworker, "This is what you get for messing with me," while allowing others to flee.
The motive for the rampage was not definitively determined by investigators, though some coworkers reported that Brown had been upset about a conflict with other workers earlier in the week. One survivor mentioned that Brown may have been angered because another coworker, Travis Nelson, was using a pallet jack typically assigned to him. Nelson, 23, was among the deceased and was related to Edwards. Another of their relatives, 46-year-old Lonnie Ellingburg, was also killed in the attack. The family was left to plan a triple funeral for the three related men.
In total, Brown shot seven people, killing five of them before taking his own life at the scene. The other victims who lost their lives were Leonardo Rodriguez, 49, and a 45-year-old Mexican national who was not immediately identified. The shooting, which lasted approximately ten minutes, prompted a massive police response. When officers arrived, Brown was still moving through the building before he ultimately committed suicide. The plant was shut down indefinitely following the tragedy to allow for an investigation and to provide counseling for the traumatized employees.
