At Least 5 Killed in Tulsa Mass Shooting

Tulsa police confirmed Wednesday that five people were killed, including the shooter, during a mass shooting at a medical facility in 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.

Deputy Tulsa Police Chief Eric Dalgleish said that the shooter—who used a rifle and a handgun during his rampage—died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police also said they connected a bomb threat at a home in Muskogee to Wednesday’s shooter.

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.”

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.

Originally published at Commondreams.org, written by Brett Wilkins.