Pitt clinic attack leaves two dead
He is shot dead and several are injured in the University of Pittsburgh rampage.
A gunman kills one and hurts others before he is slain at a university psychiatric facility.
— A man armed with two semiautomatic handguns entered the lobby of a psychiatric clinic at the University of Pittsburgh on Thursday and opened fire, killing one person and wounding several others before he was shot dead, apparently by campus police, the mayor said.
Six people were wounded by gunfire, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said. A seventh suffered unspecified injuries but wasn’t shot, officials said.
The mayor stopped short of confirming the gunman had been shot by at least one University of Pittsburgh police officer. But he confirmed that “police acted admirably and did engage in gunfire.”
“There’s no doubt that their swift response saved lives today,” he said.
Shooting witness Gregory Brant said he was in a waiting room on the first floor of the clinic building when pandemonium broke out.
“We heard a bunch of yelling, some shooting, people yelling, ‘Hide! Hide!” he said. “Everyone’s yelling, ‘Stay down!’ ”
Brant, 53, and six other people, including a young girl and her parents, barricaded themselves inside the waiting room. But he said they did not feel safe because there were doors with windows along adjacent walls.
“The way the room was arranged, if he [the gunman] had gone to either window and would have seen us in there, he could have done whatever he wanted,” Brant said.
The group crouched in a corner, hoping the gunman wouldn’t see them as he went past, Brant said. The men in the group decided that if the gunman entered the room, they would rush him.
“We were kind of sitting ducks,” Brant said. “Luckily, he didn’t see us in there, and we didn’t make eye contact with him.”
Brant estimated the ordeal lasted 15 or 20 minutes.
School officials sent out email and text alerts shortly after 2 p.m. to warn people of the shooting. Nearby buildings were on lockdown for hours afterward.
One of the injured was a police officer grazed by a bullet, the mayor said. Officials didn’t say whether that officer shot the gunman, whose identity and relationship to the clinic, if any, weren’t disclosed. The injured included employees and a visitor, said Dr. Donald Yealy, chairman of emergency medicine at the university’s medical school.
The clinic, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, is affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and is one of several affiliated hospitals adjacent to the university. Other schools are nearby, including Carnegie Mellon, Carlow and Chatham universities.
The medical center said it had received patients from the shooting. Two patients were in intensive care, two were released and three were being admitted, it said. All were expected to survive.
Authorities declined to speculate on the gunman’s motive.