A fired worker hunted down and shot to death six employees of an auto parts supply warehouse on Wednesday, then refused to surrender and was killed by police, authorities said.

"From the scene, it appears he went throughout the supply warehouse shooting them," acting Chicago Police Superintendent Philip Cline said. "They all suffered fatal gunshot wounds."

The gunman, identified by authorities as 36-year-old Salvador Tapia, had been fired six months ago for poor performance at Windy City Core Supply Inc., and recently made threatening telephone calls to one of the owners.

"According to management, he was fired six months ago for being a poor employee -- late, not showing up at work, causing trouble at work," Cline said. The phone calls were not reported to police.

When officers arrived Wednesday morning in answer to a call of shots fired, an employee with his hands tied behind his back, who had escaped, told them Tapia was inside and had shot several employees. Another worker who was caught in rush hour traffic also escaped the carnage.

Tapia may have arrived before some employees, then fired at arriving officers in two separate confrontations outside.

A team of heavily armed officers then stormed the warehouse -- which Cline described as a thicket of barrels, containers and auto engines -- and found Tapia hiding. He refused to put down his weapon, a Walther PP .380 pistol, and was killed by an officer, Cline said.

Police searched the warehouse for hours afterward, looking for any additional victims amid the maze of auto parts.

Tapia had been arrested a dozen times in the past 14 years on various charges, including illegal possession of a weapon, domestic battery and assault. He was convicted in 1989 of illegal possession of a gun and received a year's probation.

"The problem here is easy access to a firearm," Cline said. "I mean here's someone who never should have had a gun, and it's tragic results from it."

Chicago, which has one of the nation's highest murder rates, has been in the forefront of U.S. cities suing gun manufacturers, distributors and retailers. Mayor Richard Daley frequently rails against the influx of weapons into the city that bans their sale inside its borders.

Last week in Ohio, an automotive supply plant worker killed one co-worker and wounded two others before killing himself.

Other workplace shootings in recent years include the July 1999 slayings of nine people at two Atlanta brokerage offices by a stock trader, who earlier killed his wife and two children. In December, a copier repairman shot to death seven people at a Xerox Corp. facility in Honolulu.

In February 2001, a former worker at a suburban Chicago Navistar factory who was about to start a prison term returned to the plant and opened fire, killing four and then himself.

(China Daily August 28, 2003)