Tulsa shooting sees four victims and the shooter dead, only eight days after the Uvalde school shooting and two weeks after Buffalo.
A man carrying a rifle and a handgun came onto the campus of St. Francis Hospital Wednesday afternoon. He went into the Natalie Medical Building, which houses their outpatient surgery center, a breast health center, and an orthopedic clinic. And he opened fire.
It only took police moments to arrive on the scene. The sound of firearms led them to the second floor, where multiple people were wounded. Police Captain Richard Meulenberg called it a “catastrophic scene.” By the time they arrived, the man holding the gun was dead, apparently by his own hands. He has not yet been publicly identified.
There’s not yet any indication as to why this tragedy happened, police believe it to have been a targeted incident.
“He very purposefully went to this location, went to a very specific floor, and shot with very specific purpose,” Meulenberg said. “This was not a random shooting by this individual.”
Details, so far, are slim. The authorities haven’t released the identities of the shooter, or of any of the casualties. Ten more people were injured, no one seriously.
The community of Tulsa is shaken.
“This campus is sacred ground for our community,” said Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum. “For decades, this campus has been a place where heroes come to work every day to save the lives of people in our community.”
According to the Gun Violence Archive, the Tulsa shooting is the 233rd mass shooting in the United States in 2022. They define a mass shooting as one in which four or more people (excluding the shooter) are shot, whether or not any of the victims died. The recent holiday weekend alone saw nine other mass shootings with at least one casualty each, too many for them all to even make the news.
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