Tulsa police confirmed Wednesday that four people were killed, including the shooter, during a mass shooting at a medical facility in the northeastern Oklahoma city.
The Tulsa World reports the shooting occurred Wednesday afternoon in a building just south of Saint Francis Hospital. Tulsa Police Capt. Richard Meulenberg described a "catastrophic scene" at the Natalie Building at 64th Street and Yale Avenue.
ACTIVE SHOOTER UPDATE: We can confirm 4 people are deceased, including the shooter, in the active shooting situation at St. Francis hospital campus.
— Tulsa Police (@TulsaPolice) June 1, 2022
Officers are still clearing the building. More info to follow.
Tulsa City Councilor Connie Dodson was at St. Francis Hospital's emergency room when the shooting took place.
"They locked it down without announcing anything, but then people heard the large presence of police and responders in the area and were getting alerts on their phones," she told the World. "There were approximately 30 people in the ER at the time, but everyone was calm and watching the activity outside and live reports on the TV."
Shootings unfolding simultaneously right now in America: At a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma; a Walmart in Pittson, Pennsylvania; and a high school in Los Angeles, California.
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) June 1, 2022
By the way, THIS IS TOTALLY FUCKING LEGAL in Oklahoma: "Police received a call of a man walking with a rifle near a medical office."
— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) June 1, 2022
A good guy with a gun in Tulsa until he opened fire. #okleg https://t.co/iveGIqAyZA
According to the Gun Violence Archive, the incident is the 20th U.S. mass shooting—defined as acts in which at least four people are shot—since the May 24 massacre of 21 students and staff at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
It was also the second mass shooting in Oklahoma this week. One woman was killed Sunday and seven others were injured when a gunman fired more than 40 rounds during a Memorial Day festival in Taft, near Muskogee.
The Oklahoma shooting occurred on the 101st anniversary of the second and final day of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre, in which scores and possibly hundreds of Black residents of the city's prosperous Greenwood District, popularly known as "Black Wall Street," were shot, burned, beaten, and bombed to death by racist mobs of white people, at least 10 of whom were also killed.
