An argument in a hospital parking lot escalated into a shooting that killed three people, including a police officer, in the US city of Chicago on Monday.
The violence only ended when police engaged in shootout with the gunman inside Mercy Hospital.
“We have four deceased individuals: a police officer, two female staff employees at the hospital, and the offender,” police Superintendent Eddie Johnson told journalists.
The shooter killed the first victim—a woman who was in a “domestic relationship” with him—during an argument in the parking lot, then fired at police when they got to the hospital, and ran inside, Johnson said.
Additional police—including SWAT—arrived at the scene, and officers “engaged the offender for several minutes in the hospital, with gunshots being fired by the offender and by the police,” he said.
During the shootout, the gunman killed a second woman when she got off an elevator, Johnson said.
The shooter was also fatally wounded, but it was unclear if he killed himself or was killed by police.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel identified the two female victims as a doctor and a “pharmaceutical assistant.”
Patients described being alarmed by the sound of gunshots outside Mercy Hospital and seeing a man apparently walking with a woman in the parking lot before shooting her three times in the chest.
“Once she fell to the ground, he stood over her and shot her three more times,” bystander James Gray told reporters, adding that the attack played out “like a movie scene.”
TV footage showed terrified patients and staff filing out of the hospital into a parking lot with their hands in the air after officers flooded the area.
Mercy Hospital has identified the two members of its staff as emergency room physician, 38-year-old Tamera O’Neal and 25-year-old pharmaceutical assistant Dayna Less. O’Neal was described as a fascinating, hardworking person. Hospital officials said that O’Neal never worked on Sunday because of her religious beliefs.
Police say O’Neal was confronted in the hospital parking lot by the gunman, with whom she had been in a domestic relationship. Witnesses say the man shot her and she fell to the ground. The gunman then stood over her and shot her again.
Hospital officials say Less was in training to become a pharmacist. She was a recent Purdue University graduate.
Also killed was 28-year-old Chicago Police Officer Samuel Jimenez, the father of three children.
