A gunman shot a doctor to death outside a Chicago hospital on Monday before storming the facility and killing a pharmaceutical assistant and a police officer during an exchange of gunfire and dying in the rampage, officials said.
The shooter knew the doctor he shot outside Mercy Hospital, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson told a news conference, describing the initial killing as an act of domestic violence.
The gunman was the ex-fiance of the doctor, Chicago media outlets reported, with one witness saying he demanded a ring back.
The shooting sent doctors and patients streaming out of the facility, some with their hands up, as heavily armed police officers sought to secure the hospital.
“The city of Chicago lost a doctor, a pharmaceutical assistant and a police officer, all going about their day, all doing what they love,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel told reporters.
“This tears at the soul of our city. It is the face and consequence of evil.
The gunman, after killing the doctor, fired at arriving police officers with a single handgun, Johnson said.
The gunman, whose name has not been released, then burst into the hospital. Officers followed him inside and exchanged gunfire with him for several minutes, Johnson said.
Officer Samuel Jimenez, who joined the Chicago police force last year, died during the gun fight, officials said. The 28-year-old was married with children and the second Chicago officer killed in the line of duty this year.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that all of those officers who responded were heroes and they saved a lot of lives, because we just don’t know how much damage he (the gunman) was prepared to do,” Johnson said.
In a sign of the random nature of the rampage, the pharmacy assistant shot by the gunman just happened to be getting off an elevator, Johnson said. Her name has not been released.
Media identified the doctor killed outside the hospital as Tamara O’Neal.
The gunman also died but it was not immediately clear if he shot himself or was struck by a police officer’s bullet, Johnson said.
Another officer was spared injury when a bullet lodged itself in his holster.
In Denver, another shooting left one person dead and three others wounded on Monday. At least one suspect remained at large after the shooting on a downtown street corner.
The survivors were initially reported to be in critical condition, but police later said in a message on Twitter that the injuries were “believed to be non-life threatening.”
No further official details were immediately available about the circumstances of the shooting, which erupted about 4 p.m. in the lower downtown area of Denver known as LoDo, a district of hotels, restaurants and high-rise residential lofts.
The area is close to Coors Field, home to Major League Baseball’s Colorado Rockies.
The Denver Post newspaper cited a witness as saying he saw a single gunman open fire with a pistol on a group of people, then get into the driver’s seat of his car, slam the door shut and speed away.
The witness added that he heard roughly six gunshots and that one person in the crowd fired on returned gunfire at the assailant’s car as it drove away. The witness also said the people targeted by the gunman appeared to be transients or homeless.
The Denver bloodshed came a short time after an unrelated shooting at a hospital in Chicago, where a gunman killed a doctor, a pharmaceutical assistant and a police officer before the suspect was himself shot to death, police said.
Denver police initially put the total number of victims at four, one declared dead at the scene. Later it updated the toll on Twitter, saying five people were shot, one fatally. The four hospitalized were in stable condition, police said.
There were no arrests, and no word on what might have precipitated the violence.
“We don’t know right now whether there was one shooter or more than one,” Denver police spokesman Doug Schepman told reporters, adding that investigators had yet to determine the cause and whether the assailant or assailants knew any of the victims.
“It’s too early to say what happened and why,” he added. “To have multiple gunshots fired in an area like this is quite concerning.”
Schepman also acknowledged there had been a homicide a couple of blocks away on Sunday, but added, “At this time we do not have information that connects these two incidents.”
