Nov. 20 -- A gunman opened fire at a busy hospital on Chicago’s South Side on Monday afternoon and then shot at responding police, killing a rookie officer, a doctor and another hospital staffer while triggering a chaotic emergency response that engulfed a broad swath of the city.
The gunman then either shot himself or was killed by police, authorities said. He was identified Tuesday morning as Juan Lopez, 32, who police sources said had no criminal record and had been issued a concealed carry permit.
The incident erupted about 3:30 p.m. in the parking lot at Mercy Hospital & Medical Center when Lopez got into a verbal altercation with a woman who worked at the hospital and with whom he had a “domestic relationship,” police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said at a news conference Monday night.
Lopez displayed a gun, and someone called 911 to report an assault in progress. That was quickly followed by a call of shots fired. Lopez fatally shot the woman, Johnson said.
Hospital officials confirmed late Monday night that the woman was Dr. Tamara O’Neal.
As police responded, the man fired on them before they could exit their vehicle, Johnson said. Numerous other cops responded to the scene, including tactical officers, Johnson said, and police and the man exchanged gunfire inside the hospital during an incident that went on for minutes. The man shot and killed a pharmacy resident as well as Officer Samuel Jimenez, who had only finished his probationary period as an officer in August.
Jimenez, 28, was married with three young children, according to the Police Department.
The shooting Monday marked the second time in 2018 that a Chicago police officer had been slain in the line of duty, the most since multiple officers were fatally shot in 2010. In February, a foot pursuit downtown ended with a man shooting and killing Cmdr. Paul Bauer.
The incident could have resulted in more casualties, as Johnson noted that gunfire struck another officer’s holster.
“We train with the hospitals and the Fire Department for incidents just like this,” he said. “There's no doubt in my mind that all those officers that responded were heroes and that they saved a lot of lives because we just don't know how much damage he was prepared to do.”
Johnson was flanked at the news conference by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who appeared distraught as he spoke haltingly in a voice heavy with emotion.
"The city of Chicago lost a doctor, a pharmaceutical assistant and a police officer all going about their day, all doing what they love,” Emanuel said at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where Jimenez died. “This tears at the soul of our city. It is the face and the consequence of evil."
Dayna Less, 25, a Purdue University graduate who was in training at the hospital to be a pharmacist, had just exited an elevator when she was shot, according to Johnson and the hospital.
Jimenez and his partner had responded to a call of an officer in need of help.
“When they pulled up, they heard the gunshots, and they did what heroic officers always do — they ran toward that gunfire,” Johnson said. “So they weren't assigned to that particular call, but they went because that's what we do."
Kevin Graham, the president of Jimenez’s union, the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, said the officer “got up this morning, went to work and wanted to protect the city of Chicago.”
“He did just that, but he did so with his life,” Graham said.
The active shooter at the hospital spurred a massive emergency response. In the first few minutes, police had to deal with conflicting information about how many gunmen there were and whether the gunman might have left the hospital in a car or on a bus. Police dispatchers said schools went on lockdown, and police closed busy roads around the hospital in the city’s Bronzeville neighborhood.
Radio traffic indicated that one of the initial 911 calls came from the victim herself.
“Caller says she doesn’t see the gun, but he threatened he would shoot her and himself,” someone said over the radio.
Other calls from the hospital soon followed. Eventually, voices could be heard saying police were taking fire. Later, voices inquired as to Jimenez’s location.
Eventually, someone reported, “Officer Jimenez is shot.”
As officers descended on the hospital in the minutes after the shooting, they worked with dispatchers to sort out where the shooter went, how many gunmen there might be and where in the building people had holed up. Later, officers cleared King Drive so that an ambulance could rush the wounded officer to the University of Chicago Medical Center in an unsuccessful effort to save his life.
Those who were in and around Mercy described their terror as pops resounded through the hospital, a towering white building that opened in 1968.
Hospital patient James Gray said he was coming out of the clinic area when he saw a man shoot a woman three times in the chest. The gunman stood over the woman and shot her three more times after she fell to the ground, he said. A squad car then turned its lights on and came down the drive, prompting the gunman to open fire at the squad car.
“It was chaos,” Gray said. “It was just mass chaos.”
Gray said the gun looked like a 9 mm handgun; a police source said authorities had indeed identified it as a 9 mm.
Hector Avitia, who was watching television in a waiting room at the hospital with his wife, said he he saw a woman in blue scrubs shot outside and fall to the ground before officers exchanged fire with the shooter. The gunman then made his way inside the hospital as Avitia and others hid by a desk.
“He could have easily just aimed at us, too, because he was just shooting like a maniac,” Avitia said. “And he obviously knows how to shoot because he was holding the gun with both hands.”
Jennifer Eldridge was working in a pharmacy at the hospital when she heard the shots and closed the pharmacy’s metal shutters and barricaded herself in with others.
"He wasn’t too far from the pharmacy,” she said of the gunman. "At one point, we did think that he was actually trying to enter because our door — somebody was trying to get our door ajar — and you could hear him. So at that point my boss decided to close his door, and we barricaded ourselves inside.”
"We just heard the shots,” said Eldridge’s colleague, Monique Hubbard. “And it was just: pop, pop, pop, pop.”
Police removed people from the hospital, scrambled to block main streets around the hospital and set up staging areas for the news media, witnesses and family members looking for their loved ones. Authorities arranged for CTA buses to park nearby and hold people who’d been in the hospital so they did not have to wait outside in the cold.
Erika Avalos and Mirabel Salto watched the aftermath of the shooting from a window in a medical office building across the street.
First they saw emergency vehicles rush in from all sides. About two dozen people began flooding out of the hospital, some running, some walking and some pushing people in wheelchairs.
Then Avalos saw medical professionals doing chest compressions on someone lying on a gurney in the middle of the street.
They received alerts on their cellphones about an active shooter. They began dialing their colleagues who were working at the hospital, and they fielded calls from their family members.
“What’s going to happen now?” Avalos recalled thinking, fearful that the shooter might next enter their building.
Chicago Tribune’s Patrick O’Connell, William Lee, Morgan Greene, Elvia Malagon, Deanese Williams-Harris and Annie Sweeney, Elyssa Cherney and David Heinzmann contributed.
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