A shooting at Mercy Hospital & Medical Center on Chicago’s near south side this afternoon left four dead including a police officer and the unidentified shooter.
The shooting began after the gunman confronted his girlfriend outside the hospital in Bronzeville, possibly over a “broken engagement,” sources said. The gunman shot the woman at least three times, then stood over her and fired some more, witnesses said. He then ran inside where he shot the officer and another person. The gunman fired at other officers, and a bullet struck the holster of one of them, burrowing into the side of his gun, sources said. A fragment of the bullet fell into his pocket.
The murdered police officer has been identified as Samuel Jimenez.
The shooter died of a gunshot wound to the head. It isn’t clear if that was the result of return fire or a self-inflicted wound.
(Witness James) Gray said the gun looked like a 9 mm handgun; a police source said authorities had identified it as a 9 mm.
When the gunman came into the hospital, it appeared that he was shooting people at random, said Gray, who saw one other person shot.
Under Illinois law, it’s prohibited to carry a firearm in “any building, real property, and parking area under the control of a public or private hospital or hospital affiliate, mental health facility, or nursing home.” So much for the state’s famously strict gun control laws. All they did in this case is make sure that no one in or near the hospital other than the law enforcement officers could defend themselves.
Four dead in Chicago hospital shooting. https://t.co/JgbsvEvX15
— The Associated Press (@AP) November 20, 2018
Hey Joe?
He aint going down Mexico way. Way down south where he can be in peace and aint no body gonna find him…. nooooo… he had to go and kill people that had nothing to do with his pain. Go to hell.
WTF is with this murder/suicide (by cop) crap of late? While I’m not rolling over for the anti-gun group’s logic on disarmament, we really need to start looking after whom is/is not suitable for possessing arms. How was this not noticed by the gunman’s friends and/or family?
Condolences to the officer, bystanders, and innocent victims.
@Illinois
It ain’t that easy. that’s the thing.
Don’t know how it works in your state but here (TX) LE can ONLY intervene and remove guns if there is “imminent threat” meaning a specific expressed intent to harm a specific person or set of people. And most of the time they can only impose a 72 hour hold and then the person gets the guns back or can go get some.
Obviously someone pissed about the end of a relationship might not be deterred much by even a 72 hour delay. People who stalk and kill current or former domestic partners are often very disturbed, and very determined.
Even if a family member or mental health person was worried, “imminent threat” is still usually the rule. Being an asshole generally isn’t enough for any kind of legal action to be taken or sustained. So it seems.
Even if his legal firearms had been taken from him he was confronting a woman, with the intent of murder, coming out of a gun free zone. He would have known she was unarmed and he could have chosen any weapon. Knife, ax, blunt instrument at leisure and still murdered her.
And since he started out with murder in mind why would he hesitate to buy an illegal gun? The only hope this victim, or any other, had is that they be armed. And that’s the one solution certain left leaning parties in our great nation seems determined to stop. No weapons for future victims.
@jwm
Absolutely correct that he could have gone after her any other way and still succeeded, and still harmed others, too.
If what’s reported above is correct it sounds like the next group of people he went for after her WERE the armed people, the officers. Thousand Oaks shooter did the same thing. Went for the security guard first.
Exactly. If the person has already reached the state of mind where they are willing to commit murder, it takes a really stupid person to believe that a gun law will stop them.
This guy went after armed cops only because he was too shicken chit to off himself. His goal was for his own life to end once his mission of ending his girlfriends life was accomplished.
Lots of sick crazy people in this world.
“Even if a family member or mental health person was worried, “imminent threat” is still usually the rule.”
And how many times do liberals keep insisting we cannot stigmatize the mentally ill, and that they aren’t dangerous?
Yeah, too many times to count…
@Geoff
Thing is, FBI data I’ve looked at states that active shooters mostly own their guns legally, and are NOT mentally ill. That’s why, as a mental health professional, I’m not sure that the whole mental health road is the fix for this. I do think mental health would make a difference in terms of suicides. But active shooters? So far I haven’t seen a lot that supports that notion, but I’m continuing to keep up with data as it emerges.
I was looking at the reporting on the sentencing of Christopher Watts today. That guy was not mentally ill; he planned the deliberate murder of his whole family and no one had any idea he was in another relationship and wanted out of his family commitments. That’s not mental health.
There is no fix for ‘this’ short of nuking the site from orbit. Humans have always been and will always be violent. It started way before guns and will continue til we are gone from this universe.
The only reasonable approach to ‘this’ is to let each person decide whether or not to be armed and where and when to be armed. A few exceptions, prisoners serving time, etc, should be made. But very few.
JWM has the right of it. There are some men who have the attitude “if I can’t have her, can’t nobody have her!” There are a lot of women who will go back to a man, no matter how often he beats her. There is a reason that domestic calls are regarded as dangerous for the cops that respond to them.
Human nature includes both the good and the bad, and sometimes the very bad!
“We” as a society made the choice to let the mentally ill run freely aound our cities. In the early 1980s, New York City was sued by the ACLU. Because they forced a homeless black women into mental health care, because she was urinating/defecating in public and eating her own feces. The city lost and paid millions $$$ to sick ACLU lawyers.
Libertarians, Liberals, and the Left celebrated this “victory” over government power.
The dismantling of the US Mental Health Care system because some people were afraid of a USSR style medical health support system in this country has had real deadly consequences for people in the future.
Now you can “legally” defecate/urinate in the public spaces of San Francisco. If you don’t enforce the law then it defacto becomes legal.
@Chris
Mental illness from the data I’ve been looking at is only a factor in maybe 4% of gun crimes. The other 96%? Nope. Mental illness not a significant factor. I’m still looking at stuff but that’s been consistent so far.
See, if this was really about mental illness, this would be easy. There would be a “fix.” We would just put more money into mental health and that would solve things which is what a lot of people are hoping. But I am not seeing any evidence that there is any kind of strong link between mental health and violent crime. If anything, mentally ill people are 3 to 5 times more likely to be the VICTIM of violent crime than others.
We’re talking about selfish, stupid, and evil; not mentally ill. that’s why this is such a hard problem.
“That guy was not mentally ill; he planned the deliberate murder of his whole family…”
ummmkay… sounds like normalcy how?
Elaine d
I believe you’re correct in that the mentally ill are not committing the majority of these crimes. But they are increasing in number because we have in fact decided to allow them to run free in society. 50 years ago they would have been locked up. Whether or not people support that idea or not it doesn’t matter.
The question is what to do about these individuals who commit crimes?
And the fact they’re loose on the streets allows some of them to murder.
Most criminals who commit crimes are under the influence of some kind of substance alcohol marijuana heroin whatever. Legalizing these substances will not reduce crime. As the lawyers would like to say.
If their goal is to empty the jails and reduce the prison population that is possible. But that is not what they say. They say it will reduce crime and when they say that they are just liars.
I understand that people who advocate for drug abusers will not like the idea of them being shot by gun owners who feel their lives are threatened or their property is being stolen of damaged. But that is the best solution.
There are consequences to being a drug addict who uses violence and steals. And a lot of advocates for drug addicts refuse to recognize that.
I believe most of these Advocates or white. And they do not live in the neighborhoods where these drug-addicted criminals are controlling the streets during the night and even during the day in these ravaged neighborhoods.
Most advocates for drug addicts are socialist Progressive in their political orientation. These people have never supported the Second Amendment to the Bill of Rights. And in fact I don’t believe any of them support the Bill of Rights as a whole.
@tsbhoa
Psychopathy is not a mental illness in the sense that the person has lost touch with reality or hallucinates or has impaired functioning. Psychopaths can think and reason, know what society considers right and wrong, and hold jobs and such like you and me. They’re not necessarily impaired in the way someone with depression or anxiety or PTSD might be. They simply lack any form of empathy for others.
Even James Holmes didn’t get by with an insanity defense. He had problems but the way he planned and thought out his actions didn’t indicate that he was so lost or sick he didn’t know what he was doing. Jury rejected it.
Rather than taking his guns away, if he is that damaged, maybe he should be taken away. If he is dead set on killing someone, he could just used another means(knife, car, arrow, dart, etc.)
” While I’m not rolling over for the anti-gun group’s logic on disarmament, we really need to start looking after whom is/is not suitable for possessing arms.”
Yes, you are. You are supporting gun control. That is not the responsibility of the State. It is the responsibility of the individual to be capable of defending themselves. Remove infringements on the unalienable right to keep and bear arms AND fix infringements on the unalienable individual right to self defense and watch these events go to near zero over time. The alternative is to become an anti-gunner, as have you. That only ends one way and it ain’t good for individual liberty.
I respect your point. In that framing, I am playing into their agenda.
My point of someone motivated enough to seek out another person for death, infers that one would think it easier to identify this trait and head it off ahead of time. For this I wandered into the words I used.
Regulating the tool is not answer. Neither is more government intervention.
@Illinois
It seems that in other countries with much stricter gun laws, they finally just gave up trying to figure out who could or would be a danger and simply imposed gun laws. Basically they said, there’s really no way to tell who’s going to be a bad actor – in other words we can’t really effectively regulate the people – so we’re gonna do the thing we know we CAN do and regulate the guns.
“While I’m not rolling over for the anti-gun group’s logic on disarmament, we really need to start looking after whom is/is not suitable for possessing arms.”
The *second* you move away from black-and-white ‘rules’ on who may or may not carry weapons, and you put that ‘decision’ on someone who has a position of ‘authority’, like local police, you WILL get abuses where only the politically ‘connected’ get carry permits.
Like Hawaii, NYC, etc. That’s unacceptable, full stop…
Imagine if someone said the same thing about you…( “arbitrary and capricious…”)
Just a reminder about what the DemoCRAPs and DNC/Liberal media have in store for ALL Americans!
*********************************************
Liberal Vox news exclaims that US Constitutional Infringements and Authoritarianism are the way to go for nationwide gun control. Points to Massachusetts Draconian gun control schemes that discourage gun ownership as best for the nation.
https://www.vox.com/2018/11/13/17658028/massachusetts-gun-control-laws-licenses
Falsified story. This is a Gun Free Zone. And this couldn’t happen there.
You are absolutely correct! The only real reason: “Its Chicago…”
Doctors for responsible gun ownership where are you?
Stuck in traffic their “highway”
I’m a nurse. I have to go back to work tomorrow, and secure my firearm in my vehicle before I enter the hospital. Because the hospital is a “gun free zone”. Last week we had an active shooter drill. “Run, hide, and fight”. MY ASS! Why not draw, aim and fire?
Because, hospital administrators don’t want the public to think that the hospital is not safe. Well, folks, the hospital IS NOT safe! Crazy people, and “normal” people who are under abnormal stress are in and out of the hospital all day long.
Healthcare professionals (nor anyone else) should not have to be sitting ducks for the latest looney tune who enters the “gun free zones” where we work.
When will the news media and politicians stop blaming the gun, and start blaming the shooter? Law abiding people should not be denied the right to self defense based upon where we work.
@Steve
People do blame the shooter. But they also don’t know what the hell to do about the shooter. Nobody does, so it seems. So it turns into the “easier” road which is blaming guns. It makes people feel like at least they’re doing SOMETHING. That’s my current theory.
Probably right, Elaine. But I’m really getting tired of responsible, law abiding firearm owners being thrown into the same bucket with criminals, terrorists, and mentally unstable people. One would think that professional journalists would try to provide some balance in their reporting. But as we all know, “if it bleeds, it leads”.
‘Professional journalists’ gave up any sense of un-bias quite a while back.
They are full-throttle ‘Progressive’ first, above all else. The major media only hire (with rare exception) those fully on-board with their Leftist agenda, and push it as far as they can…
“But I’m really getting tired of responsible, law abiding firearm owners being thrown into the same bucket with criminals, terrorists, and mentally unstable people. ”
Plays right into the long game for abolishing firearms, so it seems. And helps ratings. So why would the anti’s want less than this sort of hyped coverage of any incident?
@Steve
Sure. Number of factors in this.
—Good gun owners don’t self report. They just live their lives in a quiet law abiding way. they’re unlikely to end up on the news for ANY reason, and that’s generally a good thing.
—Many owners would rather people not know they have guns at all.
—Situations where good guy staves off bad guy are quite rare, much much more rare than bad guy offing innocent people.
And so forth.
Elaine. Good guys rarely stopping an attacker? Now you’ve spun off into total leftist gun grabber territory. Guns are used quite frequently to ward off the bad guys. But because shots aren’t fired the left refuses to acknowledge these uses.
Statements like these cost you credibility.
@jwm
May be a matter of semantics. What are people upset about? Active shooters. Situations where an armed good guy stops an active shooter: extremely rare. More were stopped by people who were unarmed.
Agreed that there are lots of incidents of “no shots fired” stoppages. “Shots fired” are what the public pays attention to. “No shots fired” situations rarely make the news.
Agreed. It is much easier to blame the gun, gun culture, the NRA than taking a long hard look at your self and society. We do live in a dangerous world. Things have gotten so easy for us. an event like this must be a fluke……….
Actually, there are statistically fewer shooters these days. It is not about trying to stop the threat, it is about taking away our guns, pure and simple.
Why are you leaving it in your vehicle? Carry the damn thing. Concealed means, ya know, concealed. Yeah, it’s possible someone finds out and you lose your job…
…What if you lose your life?
I also work in a gun-free zone and had the same drill. Someone also brought a gun into our workplace and was acting hostile. It changes nothing. The thought of defending ourselves is against policy.
Those of us working in healthcare are stuck between a rock and a hard place. “Just carry the damn thing” sounds good. And I agree, it beats dead. But the reality is that it can mean much more than just losing one’s job.
Depending upon the jurisdiction, it can mean loss of a carry permit/license, loss of professional licensure, and potential criminal charges/penalties. Only the bad guys get a slap on the wrist.
3+shooter dead in Chicago? If this happened anywhere else in that hellhole it wouldn’t have even made the local news.
You are so correct. This happened in the “white” part of the city. Things like this don’t happen in the White part of Chiraq.
ogden and washtenaw? you could not be any wrongerer…
i access two vaults at that facility regularly; nothing but meanmugs, straining spandex and fire hydrant sitters.
A bystander said it looked like a nine millimeter pistol. I know my handguns, and I’m not sure I could tell the caliber of a handgun just from looking if it’s not shooting .22 or unless it has the name emblazoned on the side of it like Ruger’s SR series. Any other tell-tale caliber signs I’m missing?
Staged Hoax!
Sorry, I don’t believe one word about these alleged “Shootings”, until I see: Start to finish, HD, time stamped, hospital security videos of these alleged “Shootings”.
Since we all know this incident will be used for gun control, there is no reason if there was a real “shooting”, that we can’t see the videos to judge for ourselves…Especially since it happened in Rahm Emmanuels Chicago!
Fully expect to see at least one of these hoax shootings a week ( Especially tying in with the Sandy Hoax Anniversary December 21st ) to Try and “Grease the skids” for Gun control legislation before congress leaves for Christmas recess!
I agree that there is an agenda for gun control in this country…..but staged shootings? I think that tinfoil would be better used on your turkey 😉
that’s just nuts…these things happen
If I had to guess this is an anti-gunner posting to make gun owners look like lunatics.
Disbelieving in reality doesn’t make it go away.
mark1955….You need counseling. Seriously.
THIS was on local TV for nearly 4 hours. Mainly because a cop died. More gun’s are bad BS…yeah this neighborhood sux. The local fake news doesn’t give a damn when mass murder happens because it’s “those” people. They make it a big deal when it’s the po-leece…
THAT is what annoyed me to a point of disgust. The “news” stations blathered on about what they didn’t know. Don’t know how many shooters, who the shooter is (once one identified), who was taken to Northwestern or what shape they’re in, how many rounds were fired (10-30 posited by numerous “witnesses”), the whole 9mm thing – really? Not a 40, 45, 380, 375, 10? And almost every sentence by an anchor was “…but we don’t know” … for FOUR HOURS. In the end, it’s a guy who wanted to murder his ex, but the news made it out to be Iraq (but they didn’t know). FOUR HOURS, on all FOUR networks. Next nut job looking to get his fame just got a sample and some neuron clicked in their brain. I just hope something happens to put that back in the box. Because the news channels did a great job of advertising what they can do for those people last night. Shame.
Health care workers, police officers and third shift service workers usually get to see good people at bad times. All seem to universally agree that there’s something to that full moon business, and don’t get anywhere near the thanks they deserve for going back on shift after days off. Thank you very much, all of you. -30-
Is the news is actually reporting on Chicago murders now, or are they still not going to say anything about the countless minorities and underprivileged that are killed every day in this dump city?
Gee man ezzz Mad Shooter. Show some Mercy at the hospital.
I find it disturbing that the latest trend seems to include shooting it out with the cops….
Possibly a variation on suicide-by-cop, for those who want to shoot themselves, but know they lack the ability to do the job themselves?
Instead of having security standing around waiting to be assassinated, they should be in a secure room at the controls of a remotely operated weapon with a nice big laser dot and HD viewing system. Maybe have a stun gun accessory for a warning shot.
I like it. CIWS or remote-operated Quad .50 at every unsecured entrance.
OK, maybe that’s overkill…
Hospitals, are disarmament zones, if they are running this kid of BS they ought to have hardened the entrances. but like most hospitals they run for a profit and get by as cheap as possible then want too disarm you for their safety thereby putting more money in their back pocket
“(Witness James) Gray said the gun looked like a 9 mm handgun; a police source said authorities had identified it as a 9 mm.”
Guess all the idiots i saw screeching that he had an “assault rifle” were wrong again.
9mm handgun – semi auto pistol, about 8″ long, you can see the grip under the hand. NOT a 1911. That is what “looks like a 9 mm” means to someone who has a little gun savvy. A revolver would be .22-.32 (small), .38-.357 (medium) Magnum (large).
But the same semi auto frames can usually do 9mm, .40 and .45 at least right?
Yeah but I would bet of all the non-1911 semi-auto pistols in the US there’s far more 9mm than any other caliber by far
You can’t determine the caliber of a gun from it’s size or appearance. 9mm handguns come in everything from small pocket pistols that fit in the palm of your hand up to large full size handguns, including 1911’s. And there are many varieties of 1911’s in many calibers. From small compact versions with 3 inch barrels all the way up to very large models with 6 inch barrels and large double stack magazines in enlarged grips. The phrase “looks like a 9mm” is totally meaningless.
I work in a store that does not allow its employees to carry.
Guess what . . . .
Mass killing in Chicago! Ban Chicago! For the children!
Easy to see why this hasn’t been a big ticket item with the major news media. It wasn’t an “assault weapon”.
Question for all Illinois democrats: You wanted “gun free zones”, WHY ARE YOU NOT ENFORCING IT?
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