Risking his life, he helped save others

Minutes after she shot two coworkers to death, the woman with a big gun in her hand confronted Dave Ciarlante inside the massive Kraft Foods plant.

"You don't have to do this," Ciarlante told her.

"Get out of my way," she said. But she didn't shoot.

She brushed past Ciarlante, seemingly intent on targeting someone else.

He didn't take his chance to flee. He decided to follow her.

And Ciarlante kept tracking her, relaying her movements to plant security Thursday night via his work-issue walkie-talkie, even after the woman pointed the Magnum at him. This time, she pulled the trigger.

"I turned, and at the same time she fired," Ciarlante said. "I just got lucky that she didn't hit me. I'm skinny as a stick."

On Saturday, Ciarlante, 41, a mechanic for Kraft since 2007, talked in a rush of words about his decision to shadow Yvonne Hiller and to provide the warnings that permitted dozens of coworkers to get away from her safely.

For those 30 minutes, Ciarlante said, he never dwelled on the risk he faced, but only on finding ways to keep security, and later police, informed about Hiller's path in the cavernous Kraft facility.

"I wasn't trying to be a hero," he said. "I just did one thing."

Police say Hiller, 43, besieged by a belief that she was being sprayed with toxins and nursing grudges over what she saw as harassment from coworkers, used a .357 Magnum to kill two other Kraft employees and seriously wound a third during her rampage. Her killing over, she surrendered to police after holing up in a plant office.

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

About six hours into his shift Thursday night, Ciarlante was on a Marlboro break outside in the back of the plant, watching as Hiller, in her Kraft uniform, walked past on her way toward the facility. Moments later, a guard at the door yelled something extraordinary: "That lady has a gun."

As a mechanic, Ciarlante has a walkie-talkie so he can respond quickly to calls to repair the massive dough mixers, ovens, conveyor belts, and other machines in the noisy plant at Roosevelt Boulevard and Byberry Road in Northeast Philadelphia.

He made a snap decision to head in. Ciarlante said that he knew Hiller slightly, just by first name, and that she worked on the third floor in the dough-mixing area. He figured she was bound for that floor.

He was correct. Hiller, after a dispute with coworkers, had been suspended from her job and escorted out. Police say she returned to the third floor to settle the score.

Ciarlante said he headed to the second floor, his first thought being to alert fellow mechanics there, who were not equipped with walkie-talkies.

As he moved through the plant, he warned everyone he passed to get out - that a gunwoman was loose in the building. Some employees didn't believe him at first, sure it was a prank.

But as soon as he got up the stairs to the second floor, he ran right into Hiller. Ciarlante didn't know it at the time, but the three victims had already been shot one floor above.

"She walked straight toward me," he said. "She had a gun in her right hand. I saw it - it was big, shiny."

At this point Hiller cursed him and told him to get out of her path.

His arms raised, he stepped aside, and she moved past. Ciarlante said he had concluded that Hiller was "on a mission," with specific targets in mind. Figuring "I'm not on her list," he tailed her as she made her way among the ovens and other machines on the second floor.

Ducking behind pillars and folding himself into alcoves, Ciarlante kept up a running commentary on his walkie-talkie. Supervisors and plant security, listening in, used the intelligence to get workers out of Hiller's path.

Despite Ciarlante's efforts to hide behind cover, Hiller knew he was behind her, he said. Periodically, he said, she turned back and took him in with her gaze.

"I'm staying back," he assured her.

"She was just walking and looking," Ciarlante said. "She had somebody else in mind, not me."

At some point, police say, Hiller did seek out and fire at a supervisor, but missed.

Ciarlante was finally stripped of protection as Hiller made her way into a long, open work space. Suddenly, a female coworker who knew Hiller ran up to her, beseeching, "Don't do this."

Ciarlante shouted: "Get away from her. She has a gun."

At that, he said, Hiller wheeled and fired.

At the same instant, Ciarlante pivoted his narrow frame. As the bullet whizzed past, he collapsed into a doorway. For an instant, he thought he had been hit. His shirt was soaked. But it was sweat, not blood.

What next?

"I started following her again."

Ciarlante watched as Hiller finally retreated into an office used for quality control, a lab for checking the Ritz crackers, Oreos, and other products made at the plant. She closed the door.

And then "Philadelphia's finest in blue were all around me," Ciarlante said.

Surrounded by maybe 30 police officers, he pointed out the room to which Hiller had retreated, crucial help, given the byzantine layout of the vast Kraft building.

"We would have had to search a very large and complex facility," Chief Inspector Joseph Sullivan said. "He saved lives, saved time."

And still Ciarlante's service wasn't complete.

The police needed his help. He joined a SWAT team as it moved through the building, looking for more victims.

That meant Ciarlante was with police as they scoped out the third-floor break room. Lying dead there, uncovered, were LaTonya Brown, 36, and Tanya Wilson, 47. The floor of the tiny 8-by-8-foot room was littered with shell casings. He recognized the victims. The scene was grim.

This was hard.

"This is a family place," he said of Kraft. "Everyone knew everyone."

On Saturday, Ciarlante, wearing a Harley-Davidson T-shirt, blue jeans, and work boots, hung out at his home in Bensalem and tried to make sense of all.

The eyes of his son David, 17, were big with pride.

"He says he's not a hero. He is a hero," his son said. "He did something big."

Before the shootings, Ciarlante said, his motto was to try to do at least one good thing every day - maybe open a door for someone, fix a flat.

Now, his girlfriend, Karen, told him, "you're good for a while."