Jesus Jiménez and Alex Traub
Gunman kills 4 in attack at Tulsa medical
building, police say.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/06/01/us/tulsa-shooting-oklahoma-news
A man
carrying a rifle and a handgun opened fire in a medical office building in
Tulsa, Okla., on Wednesday afternoon, killing four people and injuring several
others before apparently taking his own life in the latest mass shooting to
shock the country, the authorities said.
In an
interview late Wednesday night, Capt. Richard Meulenberg of the Tulsa Police
Department said the attack was not random.
“This
wasn’t an individual who just decided he wanted to go find a hospital full of
random people,” he said. “He deliberately made a choice to come here and his
actions were deliberate.” Captain Meulenberg declined to say any more about the
gunman’s motive.
The police
did not reveal the identity of the gunman, but at an earlier news conference,
Deputy Chief Eric Dalgleish said that he was between 35 and 40 years old.
The 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 is believed to
have taken place in one section of the second floor of the Natalie Medical
Building on the campus of Saint Francis Hospital, he said. The sound of gunfire
drew officers to that area.
“There is
an orthopedic center, an orthopedic office, there, but I’m unaware if that
occupies the whole floor, or if there are other offices on the floor,” he said,
adding that it was “at least part of the scene.”
As police
officers arrived at the second-floor entryway, the 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 had apparently shot himself with a pistol, he said.
Chief
Dalgleish said that the victims could have been a combination of workers and
patients. None of the wounded had life-threatening injuries, the police said,
and no officers were injured in the attack, during which the gunman fired both
his weapons.
Captain
Meulenberg said that the number of people wounded from being shot seemed to be
“very low” but that there were other injuries tied to hundreds of people
fleeing the building at the time of the attack. “Imagine a scene of mass chaos,”
he said. “You can hear gunfire echoing.”
The
Muskogee Police Department said that it was alerted by the Tulsa Police
Department that the gunman might have left a bomb at a residence in Muskogee,
about 50 miles southeast of Tulsa. Muskogee police evacuated the home and
notified those in the area to stay inside, the department said.
A bomb
squad was on its way to the residence late Wednesday, and the Muskogee police
were working to obtain a search warrant to search the home.
Mayor G.T.
Bynum of Tulsa said at the news conference that some of the families of the
victims had not yet been informed about what had happened.
“This has
been the facility more than any other that has worked to save the lives of
people in this city,” Mr. Bynum said. He praised “the broad range of first
responders today who did not hesitate to respond to this act of violence.”
The White
House said that President Biden had been briefed on the shooting, which came
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 at
a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y.
When asked
about his response to Tulsa’s joining the list of American cities that have
experienced mass shootings over the past few weeks, Mr. Bynum said that his
“thoughts are with the victims in here, many of whose families don’t even know
about this yet.”
“If we want
to have a policy discussion, that is something to be had in the future, but not
tonight, not tonight,” Mr. Bynum said.
Cliff
Robertson, the chief executive of Saint Francis Hospital, said, “There will be a
very bumpy road, I think, ahead of us.”
“But there
are over 10,000 people that are part of the Saint Francis health system that
every day commit their lives to taking care of people in need, taking care of
everyone in need, and this senseless, horrible, incomprehensible act is not
going to change that,” Mr. Robertson said.
Gov. Kevin
Stitt of Oklahoma said in a statement on Wednesday night that the shooting
today in Tulsa was “a senseless act of violence and hatred.”
Before the
news conference, Captain Meulenberg said
that the gunfire had ceased and that the authorities were searching the
building “floor by floor, room by room.”
“It’s a
catastrophic scene in there right now,” Captain Meulenberg told reporters
outside the hospital.
Chief
Wendell Franklin of the Tulsa Police said on Twitter that the police had
responded to an “active shooter incident” near East 61st Street and South Yale
Avenue in Tulsa and next to Saint Francis Hospital.
“Please
stay away from the area and yield to all emergency vehicles as we deal with
this response,” Chief Franklin said.
The Tulsa
Police Department said on Twitter that it had set up a reunification site for
families at Memorial High School.
Jason
Bailey contributed reporting, and Jack Begg and Sheelagh McNeill contributed
research.
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