Tamara O’Neal was a 38-year-old emergency room doctor who didn’t like to work on Sundays.
Sundays were when she led her choir at church.
She’d only worked at Mercy Hospital and Medical Center on Chicago’s South Side for about two years before she was gunned down Monday, in an incident that killed four, including the shooter.
“It was the end of her shift,” said Patrick Connor, director of emergency medicine and chair of the emergency department at the hospital. “She had no children. Never missed work. The best person ever, really.”
Dayna Less, 25, a recent graduate of Purdue University and a pharmacy resident in training, had joined the hospital in July. She was inside a hospital elevator when a bullet fatally struck her.
Officer Samuel Jimenez, 28, died from gunshot wounds suffered when he arrived on scene.
“We cannot thank him enough for his courage and bravery tonight,” Connor said of Jimenez. “A hospital should be a safe place. Every shooting in America is a tragedy — it is a national tragedy. And it is especially senseless when a shooting occurs in a healing space of a hospital.”
Police have not identified the shooter, who’s believed to have been in a domestic relationship with O’Neal, whom he shot in the parking lot after a verbal altercation before running toward the hospital, authorities said.
Gunfire was exchanged inside the hospital. It’s unclear if the suspect was killed by police gunfire, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson told reporters Monday evening.
Jimenez “saved a lot of lives,” said Johnson, adding that police vigorously pursued the suspect because they “just don’t know how much damage he was prepared to do.”
Michael Davenport, the chief medical officer at the hospital, said the facility held its first active-shooter drill three or four weeks ago. Staff members were trained to lockdown and barricade doors like in schools.
“We never thought we would have to experience what we had,” Davenport said. “Everyone did what they were trained to do.”
About 200 patients were at the hospital at the time of the shooting, he added. Those in the emergency room were relocated.
ABC News’ Joshua Hoyos contributed to this report.
