Active shooter situation ongoing at Illinois manufacturing company: officials

City officials say there is an active shooter situation at an industrial park in Aurora, Illinois, The Associated Press reported. News outlets showed numerous first responder vehicles outside a building housing the Henry Pratt Co. "What I saw a guy running down the aisle with a pistol with a laser on it," John Probst told WLS. "He was shooting everybody," he said. The business where the shooting unfolded is a manufacturing company, reported WMAQ-TV. A school district in Aurora, Illinois, also wrote a message on Facebook about the incident. "There are reports of an active shooter at the Henry Pratt building near Cleveland and Prairie just east of Luigi's Pizza, as a result, we are holding all district students in place for their safety, there is a police presence in the area," the statement said. "Per directions from the county sheriff, the District has been advised to go into a soft lockdown situation across the district. Teaching will continue with reduced movement. Normal operations will resume when the soft lockdown has been lifted. No one will be allowed to leave or enter our buildings until the soft lockdown has been lifted," officials added. Violent Crime Down Despite the recent spike in gun crime in Atlanta, violent and property crimes have seen a downward trend, according to statistics collected by the FBI. Some areas, however, have significantly deteriorated and others, despite improvements, still need attention. The violent crime rate—including offenses such as murder, robbery, and aggravated assault—dropped by almost one percent and is still about 4 percent above the 2014 rate. The murder rate dropped by 0.7 percent. The decline in crime, albeit small, cut short a worrisome spike in violence in previous years. Between 2014 and 2016, the murder rate had increased by more than 20 percent, to 5.4 per 100,000 residents, from 4.4. The last two-year period that the rate soared so quickly was between 1966 and 1968. The rate of property crimes, such as theft and burglary, has declined 3.6 percent since 2016 and is down more than 26 percent since a decade ago. The Epoch Times reporter Petr Svab and The Associated Press contributed to this report.