Gunman kills three over domestic spat

WASHINGTON: An argument outside a hospital turned deadly when a man pulled out a gun and killed an emergency room doctor with whom he was having a domestic relationship, then ran into the hospital and fatally shot a pharmacy resident and a police officer, authorities said.

The attacker also died on Monday but it was not clear if he took his own life or was killed by police at Mercy Hospital on the city’s South Side, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said.

Chicago “lost a doctor, pharmaceutical assistant and a police officer, all going about their day, all doing what they loved,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said. “It is the face and a consequence of evil.”

Mercy Hospital said the staff who died were Tamara O’Neal, 38, an emergency room physician who never worked on Sunday because of her faith, and Dayna Less, 25, a first-year pharmacy resident who had recently graduated from Purdue University.

The slain officer was identified as Samuel Jimenez, 28, who joined the department in February 2017, Supt Johnson said.

Police said he was married and the father of three children.

The identity of the gunman was not immediately released.

The chain of events that led to the shooting began with an argument in the hospital parking lot involving the gunman and O’Neal, police said.

When a friend of O’Neal tried to intervene, “the offender lifted up his shirt and displayed a handgun”, Supt Johnson said.

The friend ran into the hospital to call for help, and the gunfire began seconds later, with the attacker killing O’Neal.

After she fell to the ground, the gunman “stood over her and shot her three more times’’, a witness named James Gray told reporters.

When officers arrived, the suspect fired at their squad car and then ran to hide inside the hospital building.

Inside the medical centre, the gunman exchanged fire with officers and “shot a poor woman who just came off the elevator” before he was killed, Supt Johnson said, referring to pharmaceutical assistant Less.

“We just don’t know how much damage he was prepared to do,” he said, adding that Less “had nothing to do with nothing”.

The death of Jimenez comes nine months after another member of the Chicago Police Department, Cmdr Paul Bauer, was fatally shot while pursuing a suspect in the city’s Loop business district.