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By Leslie Doolittle

MERIDIAN, Miss. (Reuters) - An employee at a Lockheed Martin aircraft parts factory in eastern Mississippi opened fire on co-workers on Tuesday, killing five people before committing suicide, police said.


Eight other employees at the plant near Meridian, Mississippi, were taken to local hospitals with gunshot wounds, Lauderdale County Sheriff Billy Sollie said. Two others were being treated for shock.


Sollie said the unidentified gunman wore camouflage pants and used at least one shotgun and a semiautomatic weapon in the shooting, which occurred at around 11 a.m. EDT. He said the motive was still unknown.


But Melvin Young, who was working at the time of the rampage, said it began shortly after the gunman became angry over a problem with a time clock and stormed out of the plant.


He returned a short time later and began to fire at workers, said Young, who added the shooter had a well-documented history of disciplinary problems and weapons.


"This should have been nipped in the bud a long time ago," Young said. "When they search his home, I think they'll find an arsenal." A spokeswoman for Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin declined to comment on the shooter's work record.


The incident was the latest in a series of workplace shootings in the United States and the deadliest since seven people were gunned down at an Internet consulting firm in Massachusetts on Dec. 26, 2000.


It also came one week after a 25-year-old man shot and killed three co-workers and wounded five others at a manufacturing plant in Jefferson City, Missouri, before killing himself in a shootout with police.


The massacre in Meridian, a town about 85 miles east of the state capital of Jackson, stunned residents.


"The whole community is just in shock," Meridian Mayor John Smith told Reuters. "We are the safest city in Mississippi with a population over 30,000 and we are facing an unspeakable horror."


Lockheed Martin, the largest defense contractor in the United States, said it was cooperating with police and other authorities investigating the shooting.


The company's plant in Meridian produces parts for the next-generation F/A-22 fighter jet and the C-130J Hercules transport plane. More than 100 workers are employed at the plant. (Additional reporting by Karen Jacobs in Atlanta, Chelsea Emery in New York and Andrea Shalal-Esa in Washington)