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(Trends Wide) — Four people were killed in Tulsa Wednesday after a gunman, later found dead, opened fire on the second floor of a medical building, Oklahoma authorities said.

“It was crazy inside, with hundreds of rooms and hundreds of people trying to get out of the building,” Tulsa Police Department Capt. Richard Meulenberg told Trends Wide.

The mass shooting is the latest case in the country of first responders and civilians coming face to face with the threat of gun violence, as Tulsa joins several cities in mourning recent tragic attacks on public places, places of worship and facilities. educational.

Police received a call just before 5 p.m. Wednesday about an individual with a firearm at the Natalie Medical Building on the St. Francis Hospital campus, Tulsa Deputy Police Chief Eric Dalgleish said at a news conference. press.

Responding officers arrived within minutes: “They heard gunshots in the building and that’s what directed them to the second floor,” Dalgleish said.

The attacker was found dead by police as he made his way inside the building, Meulenberg said, and has not been publicly identified.

Police suspect the shooter’s fatal injuries were self-inflicted, and two firearms, described by Meulenberg as a “semi-automatic rifle” and a “semi-automatic pistol,” were found with him and are believed to have been used in the shooting. Two of the deceased were found in the same room as the attacker, the police captain said.

It was unclear if the four people killed were medical staff, patients or visitors, said Dalgleish, who said the shooting took place at an orthopedic facility.

Additionally, fewer than 10 people suffered non-life-threatening injuries, Meulenberg said. Authorities are trying to determine if they were injured by gunshots or during the chaos of escaping the scene, she said. No agent was injured.

Investigators are working to determine the shooter’s motive, although the shooting was not believed to be indiscriminate, Meulenberg told Trends Wide’s Don Lemon.

“He went to this location with a lot of determination, he went to a very specific floor and he shot with a very specific purpose,” he said. “This was not a random shooting by this individual.”

Emergency personnel respond to a shooting at the Natalie Medical Building on the St. Francis Hospital campus Wednesday, June 1, 2022 in Tulsa, Okla. (Ian Maule/Tulsa World via AP)

Witnesses describe first moments of Tulsa shooting

Lachelle Nathan told Trends Wide affiliate KTUL that she had arrived in her vehicle with her daughter-in-law and grandchildren for a doctor’s appointment when she saw several officers running toward the complex.

“It’s horrible, it’s sad. My daughter-in-law is from Buffalo, so she’s so close to home now that it’s not even safe to go out anymore, you know?” Nathan said.

Ten people were massacred in a racist attack at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, on May 14, a mass shooting that was followed by a bloody attack at a church in California on May 15, and a harrowing massacre at an elementary school in California. South Texas on May 24.

“I mean, you see it on TV,” her daughter-in-law said, “but you don’t think it’s really going to happen in front of your eyes, so this is a wake-up call to my kids, this really can happen anywhere and it’s very scary.”

“You can’t even go to a store, you can’t even go to school, now you can’t go to the doctor?” he said.

Debra Proctor was in another building on the hospital campus for an appointment when she heard police sirens.

“The police were everywhere in the parking lot, up and down the surrounding blocks,” said Proctor, a registered nurse with a career spanning more than four decades. “They were still arriving when I was leaving.”

Kalen Davis, a lifelong resident of Tulsa, was waiting in traffic around 5 pm local time when he saw multiple police cars responding to the scene.

In a video he shared with Trends Wide, authorities can be seen running toward a building with their guns drawn. Two officers are seen pulling long guns from their trunks as more emergency vehicles race to the scene.

“I knew it was a shooting situation because I saw the police running around with rifles,” Davis, 45, told Trends Wide. “That’s when I got excited.”

The shooting occurred on a “sacred ground” in Tulsa.

St. Francis Health System, which runs the hospital, said in a statement that some offices will be closed for the rest of the week.

Oklahoma State Representative Melissa Provenzano, whose district includes the hospital, told Trends Wide she was on campus the morning of the shooting, calling it “the center of our community.”

“This is just one of the landmarks in our city,” he said, crediting hospital staff for saving his father’s life when he contracted Covid-19.

“This campus is hallowed ground for our community,” said Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum, who also expressed “deep gratitude” for emergency services who “did not hesitate today to respond to this act of violence.”

“The men and women of the Tulsa Police Department did not hesitate,” the mayor said.

Provenzano also praised the effective police response, but urged that more proactive work is needed to stop similar shootings in the future.

“I just can’t say enough good things about them,” he said of the police, “but you know, why did they need them in the first place?”

Pointing to gun access and the need for “red flag” laws, he added, “We can do a lot more here in Oklahoma so these things can be prevented,” he said.

— Trends Wide’s Christina Maxouris, Elizabeth Joseph, Amanda Jackson, Kaitlin Collins, Sharif Paget, Melissa Macaya and Elise Hammond contributed to this report.