Four people were killed in a shooting Wednesday night at a medical building on a hospital campus in Tulsa, Oklahoma, police said. The gunman was also killed in an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.
Tulsa Police Captain Richard Meulenberg told CNN that many people had been injured – he said there were less than ten and no one was considered life-threatening. He told the Associated Press that the medical complex was a “catastrophic scene”.
The identities of the victim and the attacker have not been revealed.
The shooter’s motive was not immediately known.
The shooting took place shortly before 5 pm local time on the campus of St. Francis Hospital, Tulsa Deputy Chief of Police Eric Dalglish told reporters. Police responded to the scene within three minutes and contacted the attacker about five minutes later, he said.
“I was very pleased with what we know so far about the reaction of our officers,” Dalglish said.
The time it took police in Uwalde, Texas to face the shooter during last week’s deadly shooting at Rob Elementary School has become a key and controversial focus of this investigation. Officers waited for more than an hour to break into the classroom where the assailant had attacked.
Dalglish described the shooter as a black man believed to be between 35 and 40 years old and said he was armed with a long pistol and a pistol.
Police met the suspects on the second floor of Natalie’s hospital building, Dalglish said.
“Arriving officers heard gunshots in the building and directed them to the second floor,” he said.
Emergency personnel work at the site of the shooting at the Warren Clinic in Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 1, 2022. REUTERS
Both weapons appear to have been fired, Daglish said.
He said it was not immediately clear whether the attacker targeted anyone specifically or the shooting was accidental.
Police later received information that the shooter may have left a bomb at a residence in Muskogee, Oklahoma, Muskoggi police said Wednesday night. The house was searched by a bomb squad and no explosives were found, KOTV, a subsidiary of CBS Tulsa, told Muskogi police.
The surrounding homes were either evacuated or residents were told to take shelter on the spot.
Muskogi is located about 50 miles southeast of Tulsa.
Police in Tulsa have asked family and friends of the victims and survivors to go to Memorial High School, a block from the hospital’s campus, to wait to learn the fate of the people at the site of the shooting, KOTV reported.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Steet issued a statement calling the shooting a “senseless act of violence and hatred,” adding: “Sarah and I are praying for the families of those who lost their lives and those who were injured.”
The White House said President Biden had been briefed, adding that the situation was being closely monitored and that the White House had approached government and local officials to offer support.
Ian Hodges, who works on the hospital’s campus, said she was in another building about 100 meters from the shooting site.
She told KOTV: “I just knew something terrible was happening. I mean, the cops rushed into a building with shields and rifles, and I thought, “I’ve seen this on the news a few times in other areas.” It was almost like a repetition of something I had seen before. I just really couldn’t believe it was happening in my own neck in the woods and I’m sick because I know people who work in Natalie’s building and I’m afraid of them and I don’t know anything about their well-being at the moment. “
Hodges said she had been in isolation for less than two hours.
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