Sean Murphy and Terry Wallace, Associated Press Posted Thursday, June 2, 2022, 8:18 AM EDT Last Updated on Thursday, June 2, 2022, 8:18 AM EDT
A gunman and a gunman killed four people at a medical building in Tulsa on a hospital campus, police said, the latest in a series of deadly mass shootings across the country in recent weeks.
Wednesday’s shooting at the Saint Francis Health System campus took place the same week that families in Uwalde, Texas, began burying the dead of the deadliest school shootings in nearly a decade.
The victims and the shooter in Tulsa were found on the second floor of a medical office, where an orthopedic clinic is located, police said. The shooter, whose name was not released, died from an obvious self-inflicted gunshot wound, Tulsa Deputy Chief of Police Eric Dalglish said.
Officials scheduled a press conference Thursday morning with police and hospital officials to release more information. All appointments at the orthopedic clinic were canceled until Friday.
A series of recent gun attacks across the country, including the killing of 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uwalde by an 18-year-old gunman carrying an AR-style semi-automatic rifle, has led Democrat leaders to step up their calls for more greater restrictions on guns, while Republicans are pushing for more security in schools.
The split reflects a guerrilla divide that has hampered action in Congress and many state capitals on how best to respond to a record high number of gun deaths in the United States.
It is unclear what caused the deadly attack in Tulsa, Dalglish said. Authorities later ordered a search of a home in Muskogee, about 45 miles (70km) southeast of Tulsa, in connection with the investigation, police said.
“It seems that both weapons were fired at the scene at one time or another,” Dalglish said. “Arriving officers heard gunshots in the building and this took them to the second floor.”
Police responded to the call about three minutes after dispatchers received the signal at 4:52 p.m. and contacted the attacker about five minutes later, at 5:01 p.m., Dalglish said.
“I was very pleased with what we know so far about the response of our officers,” Dalglish said.
The length of time it took police in Uwalde to clash with an armed man during last week’s deadly shooting at a school in Texas has become a key focus of the investigation. Officers waited for more than an hour to break into the classroom where the assailant had attacked.
Tulsa police captain Richard Meulenberg also said many people were injured and that the medical complex was a “catastrophic scene”. The exact number of wounded was not immediately known.
Police and hospital officials said they were not ready to identify the dead.
The health system St. Francis closed his campus on Wednesday afternoon because of the situation in Natalie’s medical building, which houses outpatient clinics and other medical offices.
“This campus is sacred ground for our community,” said Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum. “For decades, this campus has been a place where heroes come to work every day to save the lives of people in our community.”
Bynum added: “Right now my thoughts are with the victims. If we want to have a political discussion, that’s something that needs to happen in the future, but not tonight. “
Philip Tankersley, 27, was leaving his father’s room at a nearby St. Francis Hospital around 5 p.m. when hospital staff said there was an active shooter in the building across the street, locked the doors and warned them to stay away from windows.
Tankersley said he and his mother had been sheltered in his father’s hospital room for more than an hour, trying to learn pieces of information from television news and passing nurses. He said they heard a “silver code” and a “level 1 injury” announced on the hospital’s speakers and wondered if they were safe in the room.
“I wasn’t particularly worried because the two people I had to take care of were in the same room as me,” he said. “But it was definitely a moment. ‘This is happening here.'”
Wednesday’s shooting also comes just more than two weeks after a Buffalo supermarket shot dead a white man accused of killing 10 blacks in a racist attack. A recent Remembrance Day weekend marked a number of mass shootings across the country, including at an open-air festival in Taft, Oklahoma, 45 miles from Tulsa, although single deaths accounted for most gun deaths.
There have been 12 shootings since January that have killed four or more people, according to the Associated Press (USA TODAY) Northeastern University mass murder database. The shootings killed 76 people, including 31 adults and children in Buffalo and Texas, the database said. The death toll does not include suspects in the shooting.
___
Jill Blade in Little Rock, Arkansas, Jake Bleiberg in Dallas and Mike Balsamo in Washington contributed to this report.
Add Comment