At least four people killed at Tulsa hospital; gunman had ‘intent,’ police say

Wednesday’s shooting at St. Francis Hospital in Tulsa comes exactly 101 years after the Tulsa Race Massacre, in which a White mob pillaged a Black neighborhood in the city in one of the worst episodes of racial violence in the nation’s history.

The 1921 massacre went overnight from May 30 to June 1 in the Greenwood neighborhood — just a few miles from Wednesday’s shooting — which was at the time one of the wealthiest Black communities in the nation. The slaughter was sparked by false accusations that a Black shoe shiner assaulted a White elevator operator, and it left as many as 300 people dead.

Naomi Andrews heard about the shooting in a deluge of messages from friends who were at or near the St. Francis medical campus, where she takes her kids to an orthopedic practice.

Shaken by the shooting Wednesday, Andrews, 39, thought back to other scares. She did not want her kids going to school the day after last month’s elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Tex. Her children went anyway — and their campus promptly went into lockdown because of a shooting threat, she said.

“It feels like the walls are closing in” with one incident after another, she said. The fact that people can carry a gun without a permit in Oklahoma exacerbates her fears.

The rampage in Tulsa was the 20th mass shooting since 19 children and two teachers were killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., last week, according to figures released by the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit, on Wednesday.

The archive defines mass shootings as involving four or more people who are shot or killed, not including the shooter. More than 200 such incidents have occurred this year, the nonprofit reported, meaning that on average, there has been at least one mass shooting every day.

St. Francis Health System is anchored by a 1,112-bed hospital south of downtown Tulsa. The shooting occurred on the second floor of the campus’s Natalie Building, on South Yale Avenue.

Here’s what happened when Tulsa police responded to the shooting, according to Capt. Richard Meulenberg, who spoke with The Post on Wednesday night:

• Shortly before 5 p.m. Wednesday, the police received a call about a “man with a rifle” at the hospital.
• Tulsa police responded within minutes and, upon hearing gunfire, activated an “active shooter response.”
• A few officers charged “towards the gunfire” as they entered the hospital.
• The gunfire stopped suddenly as they were making their way into the building, and they came across the victims.
• The officers then found the gunman, who had apparently taken his own life moments before.
• After the shooting, emergency services received another 911 call that contributed to their understanding that the gunman had “intent” in the shooting and did not target people “indiscriminately.” Meulenberg declined to elaborate on the identity of the gunman or the 911 caller.

Multiple shootings were occurring across the United States when a gunman killed at least four people in Tulsa on Wednesday, according to local authorities.

In Los Angeles, a high school student was shot but was in stable condition. In Pittston, Pa., a 20-year-old victim suffered gunshot wounds, local law enforcement officials said. In Akron, Ohio, three people were shot after dozens of rounds were fired, local media reported. In Michigan, a college campus was put under lockdown for several hours after a shooting.

President Biden has been briefed on the shooting in Tulsa, according to the White House, which is monitoring the situation and has reached out to state and local officials to offer support.

The gunman who opened fire Wednesday on the second floor of a medical facility in Tulsa had “intent,” said Capt. Richard Meulenberg of the Tulsa police.

The episode was not a “random shooting” in which the gunman was “indiscriminately [shooting] people with no discernible connection,” he said in a phone interview Wednesday night.

“This particular person had purpose,” he said. “It didn’t seem as though the evidence points to the fact that — he didn’t go in there and randomly pick the second floor of the facility to start shooting people.”

Debra Proctor, 65, was almost done with her doctor’s appointment at St. Francis on Wednesday afternoon when she began hearing sirens — lots of sirens — outside. “I thought this was way too many sirens for a car accident,” she said in a phone interview.

When she walked out of her appointment at the hospital’s Warren Professional Building — across the street from the Natalie Building where the shooting occurred — Proctor noticed a heavy presence of first responders.

“The building I was in wasn’t under lockdown,” she said. Although she didn’t hear gunshots, Proctor said she suspected there could be an active shooting because of the unusual number of police officers. She left the hospital about 5:05 p.m., just after the first police officers arrived at the scene.