Four Dead in Shooting in a Chicago Hospital

On 19 November 2018, there was a tragic shooting inside and out of Mercy Hospital, which is located south of downtown Chicago.

Superintendent Eddie Johnson of the Chicago police stated that four people have been pronounced dead.

The three innocent lives that were taken that night included an officer, a doctor, and a pharmacist.

The gunman was also shot and killed, but sources were unsure if the shot came from the police or the shooter himself.

Later details exhibited that the gunman was 32-year-old Juan Lopez. He started firing his gun outside the hospital, where he shot and killed his ex-fiance, Dr. Tamara O’Neal.

Lopez then entered the emergency wing of the hospital. Here he shot and killed twenty-four-year-old pharmacist Dayna Less and Chicago police officer Samuel Jimenez, who was 28.

“A hospital is supposed to be a place of healing and recovery…and we’re seeing that it is now a place where a mass shooting can take place,” executive director of the Illinois Nurses Association (INA) Alice Johnson said.

The INA recently made a law that increases violence-prevention efforts at hospitals, which also includes risk assessments of facilities. The law will be applied on 1 January. Johnson said the law would not prevent all violence in hospitals but that “obviously, there’s a lot of work left to be done here.”

“I believe that safety practices are important, but all the protocols in the world cannot hope to overcome the culture issues plaguing the city of Chicago. Until these issues are addressed, this tragedy will not be a singular event. I feel extremely saddened by this tragedy and all of the families affected by this. I also fear the extreme likelihood of this type of violence continuing to bleed through the streets of Chicago. The security team, in the current state of politics, were probably afraid to act out of fear of scrutiny, much the same as the Parkland security guard. We need to, instead of degrading security and police, applaud these brave people for doing their jobs,and maybe these issues will cease,” Fleetwood Area High School Senior Sienna Cowley said.