Four dead in hospital shooting

Witnesses report Chicago rampage appeared random

CHICAGO — A gunman killed at least three people Monday at a Chicago hospital, including a police officer, before the suspect also died, authorities said.

A police spokesman said it was not immediately clear if the attacker took his own life or was killed by police at Mercy Hospital on the city’s South Side.

Witness James Gray told reporters it looked as if the attacker “was turning and shooting people at random.”

The shooting apparently began as the suspect was walking with a woman near a parking lot. He turned and repeatedly shot the woman in the chest. He then entered the hospital and continued firing, Gray said.

The two had been talking to each other in what Gray said did not appear to be a heated exchange.

“Then once she fell to the ground, he stood over her and shot her three more times,” he said.

Earlier, authorities reported that four people were in critical condition, including the officer. At least one of the four was a hospital employee, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.

Television footage showed several people, some wearing white coats, walking through a parking lot with their arms up.

Jennifer Eldridge was working in a hospital pharmacy when she heard three or four shots that seemed to come from outside. Within seconds, she barricaded the door, as called for in the building’s active shooter drills. Then there were six or seven more shots, just outside the door.

“I could tell he was now inside the lobby. There was screaming,” she recalled.

The door jiggled, which Eldridge believed was the shooter trying to get in.

Some 15 minutes later, she estimated, a SWAT team officer knocked at the door, came in and led her away. She looked down and saw blood on the floor but no bodies.

Maria Correa hid under a desk, clutching her 4-month-old son, Angel, while the violence unfolded. Correa was in the waiting area when a hospital employee told them to lock themselves in offices.

She lost track of how many shots she heard while she waited under the desk, “trying to protect her son,” for 10 to 15 minutes.

“They were the worst minutes of our lives,” Correa, a Chicago resident, said.