Gov. Cox to lower flags statewide in honor of Indianapolis shooting victims

SALT LAKE CITY — State facilities across Utah will lower both the U.S. and state flags to honor the victims from a shooting at a FedEx warehouse in Indianapolis late Thursday. Gov. Spencer Cox authorized the lowering of the flags Friday afternoon, leaving the proclamation in effect until Tuesday evening. 

The proclamation also encourages private citizens and businesses to lower flags as well. 

The local ordinance reflects an order by President Joe Biden that lowers flags to half-staff at the White House, as well as “public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions” until Tuesday evening. 

“While we await critical details about the shooting, its motivation, and other key information, once again, I have the solemn duty of ordering the flag lowered at half-staff at the White House, public buildings and grounds, and military posts and embassies, just two weeks after I gave the last such order,” President Joe Biden wrote in his ordinance. “It’s a mass shooting just a week after we met, in the Rose Garden, with families who lost children and dear friends as bullets pierced their bodies and souls in schools, a night club, in a car at a gas station, and a town meeting at a grocery store. And it came just the night before 14^th anniversary of the shooting at Virginia Tech, in which a gunman murdered 32 people.”

The lowering of flags comes in response to mass shooting that happened after 11 p.m. in Indianapolis, according to local police. At least five other people have been hospitalized with injuries, with one in critical condition, according to the New York Times. Two others were treated at the scene.

Police report they believe the gunman had taken his own life, officers told the New York Times.