Four people were killed Wednesday in a shooting at a medical building on a hospital campus in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a police captain said.
Tulsa Police Department Deputy Chief Eric Dalgleish confirmed the death toll, saying the shooter was also dead, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
It was unclear what sparked the deadly assault. However, the unidentified gunman was carrying a pistol and rifle during the attack, Dalgleish said.
“Officers are currently checking every room in the building for additional threats,” police said in a Facebook post just before 6 p.m. “We know there are multiple injuries and potentially multiple casualties.”
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Police responded to the call three minutes after dispatchers received the report and made contact with the gunman a minute later, Dalgleish said.
Police Capt. Richard Meulenberg also said multiple people were injured and the medical complex was a “disaster scene.”
Police and hospital officials said they were not ready to identify the dead.
St. Francis Health System closed its campus Wednesday afternoon due to the situation at the Natalie Medical Building. The Natalie building houses an ambulatory surgery center and a breast health center.
Tulsa resident Nicholas O’Brien, whose mother was in a nearby building when the shooting occurred, told reporters he ran to the scene.
“They were rushing people. I don’t know if some of them were injured or just injured during the shooting, but some of them couldn’t walk very well. But they just stumbled and stumbled and got them out of there,” he said.
“I was quite anxious. So once I got here and then heard that she (her mother of hers) was okay, that the shooter had been shot and was down, I felt a lot better. It’s still horrible what happened,” O’Brien said.
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Wednesday’s shooting comes eight days after an 18-year-old gunman armed with an automatic rifle stormed into Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and two teachers before being fatally shot.
It also comes just over two weeks after a shooting at a Buffalo supermarket by a white man accused of killing 10 black people in a racist attack.
The recent Memorial Day weekend saw multiple mass shootings across the country, even as single-kill incidents accounted for the majority of gun deaths.
Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were also at the scene in Tulsa, a spokesman said. A reunification center has been set up at a nearby high school so that families can find their loved ones.
© 2022 The Canadian Press
Reference-globalnews.ca