A man with a rifle and handgun opened fire at a medical office building in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Wednesday afternoon, killing four people and injuring several others, before apparently taking his own life in the latest mass shooting to clear the country. shock, authorities said.
In an interview late Wednesday night, Tulsa Police Department Captain Richard Meulenberg said the attack was not random.
“This wasn’t someone who just decided he wanted to go find a hospital full of random people,” he said. “He made a conscious decision to come here and his actions were deliberate.” Captain Meulenberg declined to comment further on the shooter’s motive.
Police have not released the identity of the gunman, but at an earlier press conference, Deputy Chief Eric Dalgleish said he was between 35 and 40 years old.
Police received a call about a shooting at 4:52 p.m. and they arrived at the scene four minutes later, Chief Dalgleish said. All of the gunfire allegedly took place in a section of the second floor of the Natalie Medical Building on the Saint Francis Hospital campus, he said. The sound of gunshots lured officers to that area.
“There’s an orthopedic center there, an orthopedic office, but I don’t know if that takes up the whole floor, or if there are other offices on the floor,” he said, adding that it was “at least part of the scene.” . .”
When police officers arrived at the second-floor entrance, gunfire stopped, Captain Meulenberg said in a telephone interview. Officers entered and immediately found a victim, and as they continued their search, they found the body of the gunman, who apparently shot himself with a handgun, he said.
Chief Dalgleish said the victims could be a combination of workers and patients. None of the injured had life-threatening injuries, police said, and no officers were injured in the attack, in which the gunman fired both of his weapons.
Captain Meulenberg said the number of gunshot wounds appeared to be “very low”, but other injuries were linked to hundreds of people fleeing the building at the time of the attack. “Imagine a scene of mass chaos,” he said. “You can hear gunshots echoing.”
Muskogee Police said they had been warned by Tulsa Police that the gunman allegedly left a bomb at a residence in Muskogee, about 50 miles southeast of Tulsa. Muskogee police have evacuated the home and warned people in the area to stay indoors, the department said.
An explosive ordnance disposal unit was making its way to the home late Wednesday, and Muskogee police were working on a search warrant to search the home.
Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum said at the news conference that some of the victims’ families had not yet been informed of what had happened.
“More than any other, this has been the facility that has worked to save the lives of people in this city,” Mr Bynum said. He praised “the wide range of first responders who did not hesitate to respond to this act of violence.”
The White House said President Biden had been informed of the shooting, which occurred just eight days after 19 students and two teachers were killed in a mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and 18 days after 10 people were killed by a gunman in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York
When asked about his reaction to Tulsa’s joining the list of US cities that have experienced mass shootings in recent weeks, Mr. Bynum that his “thoughts are with the victims here, many of the families here are not even aware of…yet.”
“If we want to have a policy discussion, we have to have it in the future, but not tonight, not tonight,” Bynum said.
Cliff Robertson, the director of Saint Francis Hospital, said: “There will be a very bumpy road, I think, ahead of us.”
“But there are more than 10,000 people who are part of Saint Francis’ health system who dedicate their lives every day to taking care of those in need, taking care of everyone in need, and this senseless, horrible, incomprehensible act will not change that.” said Mr. Robertson.
Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt said in a statement Wednesday night that the Tulsa shooting today was “a senseless act of violence and hatred.”
Before the press conference, Captain Meulenberg said the gunfire had ceased and authorities searched the building “floor by floor, room by room”.
“It’s a disastrous scene there now,” Captain Meulenberg told reporters outside the hospital.
Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin said: Twitter that police had responded to an “active shooting incident” near East 61st Street and South Yale Avenue in Tulsa and next to Saint Francis Hospital.
“Please stay clear of the area and surrender to all emergency services while we deal with this response,” Chief Franklin said.
Tulsa Police said on: Twitter that it had set up a reunion site for families at Memorial High School.
Jason Bailey contributed to the reporting and Jack Begg and Sheelagh McNeill contributed to the investigation.