Earl Ellis was looking for his mail Friday morning.

But there was none to be found.

“I went to the Post Office to get my mail a while ago and there wasn’t any,” the Pike County businessman said Friday morning. “I asked the lady what was going on and she said. ‘there won’t be any mail today. That’s all we’re allowed to say about it.’

“And she said she couldn’t say if there would be mail on Saturday.”

The delays in mail delivery stemmed from a Thursday night shooting incident at a Montgomery post office.

A 29-year-old postal employee has been charged with two counts of attempted murder for firing shots inside the main post office in Alabama’s capital city.

Officials said Arthur Lee Darby Jr. was jailed Friday under $1 million bond.

Darby is accused of carrying two guns into a mail processing room at the beginning of his shift Thursday evening and firing several shots. No one was injured.

The police chief said officers apprehended him within 10 minutes of receiving a 911 call from the post office at 6:38 p.m.

Debra Fetterly, USPS communications specialist for Alabama, said that customers should expect mail delivery on Friday.

“Following the incident, the plant was closed,” she said in a statement. “It reopened at 8 a.m. Friday. Employees are back at work processing the mail today.”

Fetterly also said “customers should expect mail delivery. Since the plant was closed (Thursday) night, we did not process First-Class Mail. But our customers will receive Standard Mail today. This mail already was at the delivery units prior to the incident.”

P.O. Box mail at the Montgomery Main Office was not available Friday but would be available today, she said.

“We apologize to our customers and thank them for their understanding,” Fetterly said.

“We want them to know that we appreciate their business.”