Tamara O’Neal, who had recently called off her engagement to Juan Lopez, called 911 to report she had spotted him

A Chicago doctor shot to death by her ex-fiance outside the hospital where she worked called 911 moments before the shooting to report she had spotted the man and feared for her life, authorities said.

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The shooting on Monday at Mercy hospital on Chicago’s south side took the lives of emergency room doctor Tamara O’Neal, as well as a Chicago police officer and a hospital employee. The gunman, Juan Lopez, then killed himself.

O’Neal had recently called off her engagement to Lopez, and called police when she saw him outside the hospital. She also told an acquaintance in the parking lot that she was afraid of her ex, and that person made another call to 911.

When Lopez confronted his ex-fiancee, they argued about O’Neal calling off the engagement, and Lopez demanded that she return the engagement ring, police said. Then gunshots rang out, and O’Neal fell to the ground.

Witness James Gray looked out of the hospital window to see where the gunshots had come from and watched as Lopez “stood over her and shot her three more times”, he told reporters.

A chilling photograph shows Lopez standing over O’Neal’s body, his stance appearing almost casual, looking in the other direction as she lies on the ground in the parking lot.

When a police car arrived, Lopez turned his gun on the officers, striking the vehicle multiple times. Police pursued him as he ran into the hospital.

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Inside the hospital, he kept firing at police. Officer Samuel Jimenez was struck in the neck, just above the bulletproof vest he was wearing, and soon died.

The gunman also turned and fired at Dayna Less, a first-year resident in the hospital’s pharmacy, when the doors of the elevator she was on opened, killing her.

During the exchange of gunfire, Lopez was shot once in the abdomen. Then Lopez, who fired a total of more than 30 shots and had reloaded his weapon, killed himself, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said on Tuesday.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Doctor Tamara O’Neal, left, at Mercy Hospital in Chicago. Photograph: Nichelle Payne-Bush/AP

Investigators said they found nothing to indicate that Lopez had a criminal record. At the time of his death, he was an employee with the Chicago Housing Authority, and officials there said there had been no reports of any problems in his nine months on the job. But there were other signs of trouble in recent years.

In 2014, Lopez was kicked out of the city’s firefighting academy after threatening a female cadet. When the fire department learned of the threats, Lopez was told he would be disciplined. Instead of returning to the academy to meet with department officials, Lopez went absent without leave and was fired, the fire department spokesman, Larry Merritt, said on Tuesday.

Records from the same year indicate that a girlfriend of Lopez sought an order of protection against him because he was incessantly texting her. It is not clear whether she ultimately was granted the order.

Lopez had a permit to possess a concealed firearm, and had legally purchased four guns in the last five years. It was unclear if officials knew about the 2014 complaint when the permit was granted, Guglielmi said.

The Chicago police department was in mourning days before Thanksgiving for the second officer in less than a year to be killed in the line of duty. Commander Paul Bauer was shot to death in February while pursuing a suspect in the Loop business district downtown.

On 23 November 2018 one photo of the shooting scene, showing Lopez near O’Neal, was reconsidered and replaced with an image less graphic



