Yvonne Hiller Suspect in Kraft Shooting; Police Say She Executed Two at Philadelphia Plant

PHILADELPHIA (CBS/AP)v Yvonne Hiller, a Kraft Foods plant worker who had been suspended for feuding with colleagues, returned minutes after being escorted from the building with a .357 handgun, found her foes in a break room and executed two of them with a single bullet each, police said Friday.

A third employee was critically injured.

Police say Hiller had gotten into an argument Thursday evening with her co-workers at the plant in northeast Philadelphia. After she was suspended, she went to her vehicle and made several phone calls. She then allegedly grabbed the handgun, and used it to force her way past security guards at the front gate.

From there, Hiller allegedly walked to the third-floor mixing area - the area where she worked at the cookies and crackers plant - and found four people in the break room. She had no issues with one woman and told her to leave. She then opened fire on the others, Philadelphia Homicide Capt. James Clark said.

"She believed they were spraying chemicals at her, saying things behind her back," Clark said.

After leaving the break room, Hiller went down a hallway and fired shots at the supervisor who had suspended her and at a mechanic who was using a walkie-talkie to alert police and co-workers to her whereabouts, police said. She missed both.

Hiller finally went to a second-floor office and called police to tell them what she had done, authorities said. Seven other workers were hiding in a closet nearby.

When tactical police who had entered the plant found her, Hiller was in a fetal position on the floor, the gun beside her.

Police called the mechanic a hero who "did a phenomenal job" in alerting employees to evacuate the building and directing officers to where Hiller was.

"By following the suspect at great peril to himself - and we can see that by the fact that he was shot at and almost hit - he reduced our tactical problem quite dramatically," Chief Inspector Joe Sullivan said.

Police identified the victims as Tanya Renee Wilson, 47; Latonya Sharon Brown, 36; and Bryant A. Dalton; 39. Wilson and Brown died at the plant. Dalton, shot in the neck, remained in intensive care Friday at Jefferson University Hospital, police said.

The plant was closed Friday and Kraft has not said when it will reopen.

Hiller was charged with two counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, aggravated assault and other charges. She had a permit to carry the gun, authorities said.

Hiller has worked for Kraft for about 15 years, and had been in repeated arguments there in the past several years, a few of them physical, Clark said.

Mass shootings are rarely carried out by women, said Dr. Park Dietz, president of Threat Assessment Group Inc., a Newport Beach, California-based violence prevention firm.

Earlier this year, Amy Bishop, a former instructor and researcher at the University of Alabama's Huntsville campus, was charged with murder in a campus shooting spree that left three biology professors dead and three other employees wounded. She claimed the shootings "didn't happen."