Court hears confession in Kraft shooting rampage

After a preliminary hearing this morning, the woman accused of opening fire earlier this year on coworkers at the Kraft Foods plant was held for trial on multiple counts of murder, attempted murder and other crimes.

Three witnesses testified, including a homicide detective who read the four-page statement Yvonne Hiller gave the night of the shooting in Northeast Philadelphia. The defense did not present any witnesses.

In her statement, Hiller, 43, talked about her belief that her coworkers were subjecting her to "chemical abuse" by spraying her with deer urine.

She described the "mental roller coaster" she had been riding because no one believed her story, despite seeing numerous doctors and counselors and calling police to her apartment "for the smell."

She said her frustrations boiled over on the night of the shooting, when she confronted her coworkers about the deer urine.

"They told me they didn't know what I was talking about," Hiller said in her statement. "I told them, 'You think this is a prank, but you don't know what this was doing to my body.'"

Hiller was suspended that night - Sept. 9 - for the second time this year. She told detectives that she assumed she was going to be fired and she "planned on going right home."

"But then I started to think about the 15 years I spent there and how it was taken away from me," she said in her statement.

Hiller returned to the plant, at Roosevelt Boulevard and Byberry Road, and pointed a .357 Magnum at an unarmed security guard, forcing him to let her back inside, according to testimony.

She said she sought out the three coworkers from her shift and opened fire.

LaTonya Brown, 36, and Tanya Wilson, 47, both died in the third floor break room where they were shot. The third coworker, Bryant Dalton, 39, spent two weeks in the hospital and still is recovering from gunshots to the neck and shoulder, prosecutors said.

After shutting herself in a quality control room in a second floor factory space, Hiller made a number of phone calls to relatives and police. A 911 supervisor convinced her to surrender to SWAT officers on the scene.

Her arraignment was scheduled for later this month.