There were around 154 hospital-related shootings in the United States between 2000 and 2011, according to an Annals of Emergency Medicine study, with more than half occurring in the hospital and 45 percent of the time the victim is the shooter. Hospital employees comprise 20 percent of the victims, nurses are 5 percent and physicians are 3 percent.
Here are seven dramatic instances of active shooters in hospitals:
A man opened fire at Parrish Medical Center in Titusville, Fla., in July and killed an elderly patient as well as a hospital employee. Two security guards restrained the gunman, who later claimed mental illness, after he opened fire. The gunman was taken into custody after the attack, which appeared random.
Urologist Elbert Goodier III, MD, was shot and killed while at his medical office inside East Jefferson General Hospital in Metairie, La., earlier this year. The gunman walked into Dr. Goodier’s office while he was treating a patient and shot him; the police didn’t cite a motive in the case.
In September 2015, a man scaled a construction site near St. Luke’s Hospital in San Francisco and was able to fire one round before police shot him. The active shooter was pointing one of his guns at the hospital when he was fatally shot. Nobody was hurt by the shooter but the hospital did go on lockdown.
Two people died in November 2015 in a murder-suicide at Florida Hospital’s Tampa location. The shootings occurred in the morning in a room on the third floor of the hospital, although neither the shooter nor victim was a patient or employee at the hospital. The victim was taken to the emergency room where she died.
Michael Davidson, MD, died after being shot at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where he was a cardiovascular surgeon. The shooting occurred in January 2015, and the shooter killed himself shortly after the shooting while he was still in an exam room. The shooter apparently had issues with the way his mother received treatment at Brigham and Women’s.
In December 2013, a gunman opened fire in a Reno, Nev.-based Renown Regional Medical Center building. The shooting occurred at an outpatient clinic for specialized treatment. The center then went on lockdown for more than two hours after the shooting, which ended with two people — including the shooter — dead.
After a man received news about his mother’s medical condition in September 2010, he opened fire inside of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. The gunman wounded orthopedic surgeon David Cohen, MD, before shooting himself and his mother. Dr. Cohen was treated at the hospital.