5 people dead at Tulsa medical building, in the 233rd mass shooting of 2022
Updated June 2, 2022 at 5:47 AM ET
Tulsa police confirmed that a shooter killed four people at Saint Francis Hospital in Tulsa, Okla., on Wednesday.
"Four innocents and one shooter" are dead, Jonathan Brooks of the Tulsa police department said at a news conference on Wednesday.
Police have not yet identified the shooter and said that he died following a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The shooter had a rifle and a handgun on him, Brooks said.
Tulsa police said in a Facebook post just before 6 p.m. that the shooter was dead.
"Officers are currently going through every room in the building checking for additional threats," police said at the time. "We know there are multiple injuries, and potentially multiple casualties."
Tulsa police Capt. Richard Meulenberg said multiple people were wounded; he called it a "catastrophic scene."
St. Francis Health System locked down its campus Wednesday afternoon because of the situation at the Natalie Medical Building. The Natalie building houses an outpatient surgery center and a breast health center.
Aerial footage from a TV helicopter appeared to show first responders wheeling someone on a stretcher away from the hospital building.
Dozens of police cars were seen outside the hospital complex, and authorities shut down traffic as the investigation went on.
A reunification center for families to find their loved ones was set up at a nearby high school.
Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were also at the scene, a spokesperson said.
The shooting marks the 233rd mass shooting for the year in the U.S., per data collected by the Gun Violence Archive. The archive characterizes a mass shooting as four or more shot or killed, not including the shooter.
The shooting also came less than two weeks after a gunman shot and killed 19 young students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. The shooting in Texas – where the focus now is on the police response time – appeared to be on the minds of local authorities in Oklahoma.
"I ... want to express our community's profound gratitude for the broad range of first responders who did not hesitate today to respond to this act of violence," G.T. Bynum, mayor of Tulsa, said at a news conference.
This is a developing story. NPR staff and The Associated Press contributed to this report. [Copyright 2022 NPR]
