4 people killed, others wounded in mass shooting at Tulsa hospital
Four people were killed and multiple others were wounded during a mass shooting Wednesday at a medical building in Tulsa, Okla., police said.
The shooter died by suicide, Tulsa police officer Eric Dalgleish told reporters outside the hospital.
Police said not more than 10 people in total were shot.
The active shooter came in at 4:52 p.m. local time, and police were on the scene four minutes later, Dalgleish said. Officers engaged the shooter at 5:01 p.m., and he killed himself shortly afterward.
Police officers locked down the building and went floor-by-floor to evacuate people and confirm there was only one shooter. Dalgleish said the shooter was carrying a rifle and a pistol. He said that investigators hadn’t yet identified the shooter, but described him as a man in his late 30s.
Cops did not immediately speculate on a possible motive for the shooting. They said it was not known if he was targeting a specific person in the building. Police in Muskogee, Okla., said the suspect may be tied to a bomb in that city, about 50 miles southeast of Tulsa. No explosives were found there.
“This campus is sacred ground for our community,” Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum said. “This has been the facility, more than any other, that has worked to save the lives of people in this city.”
Tulsa resident Kalen Davis told CNN he was waiting in traffic at about 5 p.m. local time when he saw multiple police cars barreling toward the hospital site.
“I just knew that it was a shooting situation because I saw police running with rifles,” Davis told CNN. “That’s when I got emotional.”
Debra Proctor told CNN of the “shocking” scene she witnessed while waiting for a doctor’s appointment in another building at the hospital complex.
“Police were everywhere in the parking lot, up and down the surrounding blocks,” Proctor said. “They were still arriving when I was leaving.”
The shooting comes just eight days after an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Ten days before that, another 18-year-old targeted a Black grocery store in Buffalo for bloodshed. Payton Gendron killed 10 Black people in the massacre at a Tops supermarket before police detained him.
“President Biden has been briefed on the shooting in Tulsa, Oklahoma,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tweeted. “The White House is closely monitoring the situation and has reached out to state and local officials to offer support.”
