“It was crazy inside, with hundreds of rooms and hundreds of people trying to get out of the building,” Tulsa Police Department Captain Richard Meulenberg told CNN.
Mass shootings are the latest nationwide crackdown on rescuers and civilians facing the threat of gun violence as Tulsa joins several cities mourning the recent tragic attacks on public places, places of worship and schools. Law enforcement received a call shortly before 5 p.m. Wednesday about an individual with a firearm in the Natalie Medical Building on the campus of St. John’s Hospital. Francis, Tulsa Deputy Chief of Police Eric Dalgleish, told a news conference.
Officers who responded who arrived within minutes “were hearing gunshots in the building, and that’s what led them to the second floor,” Dalgleish said.
The gunman was found dead by police while working inside the building, Meulenberg said, and has not been publicly identified.
Police suspect the gunman’s fatal injuries were self-inflicted, and two firearms were found next to him, described by Meulenberg as a “semi-automatic rifle” and a “semi-automatic pistol,” which is believed to be they had used in the shooting. Two of the dead were found in the same room as the gunman, the police captain said.
It was unclear whether the four people killed were medical staff, patients or visitors, said Dalgleish, who said the shooting took place at an orthopedic center.
In addition, fewer than 10 people suffered injuries that did not endanger their lives, Meulenberg said. Authorities are trying to determine if they were injured by gunfire or during the chaos to escape the site, he said. No officers were injured.
Investigators are working to determine the motive for the gunman, although the shooting was not believed to be indiscriminate, Meulenberg told CNN’s Don Lemon.
“He went very resolutely to this location, went to a very specific apartment and fired for a very specific purpose,” he said. “This was not a random shooting by this individual.”
Witnesses describe the first frantic moments
Lachelle Nathan told CNN affiliate KTUL that she had arrived at her vehicle with her daughter-in-law and grandchildren for a doctor’s appointment when she saw several officers running toward the resort.
“It’s awful, it’s sad. My daughter-in-law is from Buffalo, so now she’s so close to home, she’s not even sure if you’re coming out, you know?” said Nathan.
Ten people were killed in a racist assault on a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, on May 14, a mass shooting that was followed by a bloody attack on a California church on May 15 and a heartbreaking massacre on a South Texas Elementary School on May 24th.
“I mean, you see it on TV,” her daughter-in-law said, “but you don’t think it’s really going to happen right in front of your eyes, so this is a wake-up call for my kids, this can really happen anywhere and it’s very scary. “
“You can’t even go to a store, you can’t even go to school, now you can’t go to the doctor?”
Debra Proctor was in another building on the hospital campus for a date when she heard police sirens.
“Police were everywhere in the parking lot, up and down the surrounding blocks,” said Proctor, a registered nurse for more than four decades. “They were still coming when I left.”
Kalen Davis, a lifelong resident of Tulsa, was waiting for traffic around 5 p.m. local time when he saw several police cars responding to the scene.
In a video he shared with CNN, you can see the authorities running towards a building with their weapons in their arms. Two officers are seen pulling long guns out of the trunk as more emergency vehicles rush to the scene.
“I just knew it was a shooting situation because I saw the police running with rifles,” Davis, 45, told CNN. “That’s when I got excited.”
The shooting took place in the “sacred ground” of the city
St. Francis Health System, which runs the hospital, said in a statement that some offices will remain closed for the rest of the week.
Oklahoma State Representative Melissa Provenzano, whose district includes the hospital, told CNN she was on campus the morning of the shooting and called it “the center of our community.”
“This is just one of the most iconic places in our city,” he said, and credited the hospital staff with saving his father’s life when he contracted Covid-19.
“This campus is sacred ground for our community,” said Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum, who also expressed “deep gratitude” to the first who “did not hesitate today to respond to this act of violence.”
“The men and women of the Tulsa Police Department did not hesitate,” the mayor said.
Provenzano also praised the effective police response, although he urged that more proactive work was needed to curb similar shootings in the future.
“I can’t say enough good things about them,” he said of the police, “but you know, why were they needed in the first place?”
Pointing out the accessibility of guns and the need for “red flag” laws, he added, “We can do a lot more here in Oklahoma to prevent these things from being prevented,” he said.
CNN’s Christina Maxouris, Elizabeth Joseph, Amanda Jackson, Kaitlin Collins, Sharif Paget, Melissa Macaya and Elise Hammond contributed to this report.