DETAILS INSIDE!!
A man showed up at Mercy Hospital on Monday afternoon and opened fire on his former fiancee before turning the gun on others, killing the woman, a police officer and a bystander. The gunman also died at the scene.
The incident, witnesses said, began in the hospital’s parking lot as a domestic argument involving the gunman, identified by police as 32-year-old Juan Lopez, and Tamara O’Neal, a 38-year-old emergency room physician. When a friend attempted to intervene, the gunman lifted his shirt to display a handgun, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said.
According to the Associated Press, O’Neal’s friend “ran into the hospital to call for help, and the gunfire began seconds later.”
O’Neal was killed in the parking lot, authorities said. A family member told ABC 7 Chicago that Lopez and O’Neal were engaged for about a year but that their wedding was called off in September.
Chicago Police Officer Samuel Jimenez was killed during the shootout, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed. Jimenez had joined the department in February 2017 and was married with three children.
Dayna Less, a 25-year-old pharmacy resident and bystander, was also fatally shot as she left an elevator, authorities said. ABC 7 reported that Less was a graduate of Purdue University and was planning on traveling home to Indiana on Tuesday to be with her family on Thanksgiving. She was engaged and set to be married next summer.
“The city of Chicago lost a doctor, pharmaceutical assistant and a police officer, all going about their day, all doing what they loved,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said, fighting back tears after the shooting. “This just tears at the soul of our city. It is the face and a consequence of evil.”
It was not immediately known whether Lopez killed himself or died by police fire.
A SWAT team responded to the 292-bed hospital near Interstate 55, in the city’s Bronzeville neighborhood. Nearby buildings, including the National Teachers Academy, were locked during the attack. Mercy Hospital tweeted later that the incident was over and that all patients were safe.
Lenice Donaldson, a pharmacy technician at Mercy, said she was in the back to get a drink and had just returned as she heard the gunshots. She and the other technicians locked themselves up until police got them out, she said.
“It’s just unbelievable. We came out with our hands up, and there was blood all over the floor in the lobby,” Donaldson said. “It’s a shame.”
Tracy Lyons, a cancer survivor, said she goes to Mercy for regular radiation treatments. She described listening to the gun battle between police and the shooter until a SWAT team freed her and some technicians from a lab.
“It was just nothing but pow-pow-pow,” she said. “We thought we would never get out of there.”
According to the AP, James Gray told ABC 7 that he saw multiple people shot: “It looked like he was turning and shooting people at random.” In an interview with CBS Chicago, a witness who was in the hospital said she saw blood by an entrance. Another witness said he saw a gunman shoot someone multiple times in a parking lot. He added that officers responded quickly and exchanged gunfire with the shooter.
Sen Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) wrote in a Monday evening tweet that he was praying for the victims of the shooting and their families.
No comments