Oklahoma hospital shooting: Security guard killed, suspect fatally shot

A suspect entered an Oklahoma hospital and shot and killed a security guard in the facility, and the suspect was fatally shot by police, authorities say.

A security guard was shot and killed at INTEGRIS Health Enid Hospital in Oklahoma late Sunday night. Authorities said the suspect was fatally shot by police.

Police said the incident occurred at INTEGRIS Health Enid Hospital late Sunday night. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation identified the victim as J.W. Bode, and said that he was 72 years old. Authorities said he was a guard employed by the hospital.

The suspect was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. Authorities had not identified the suspect as of late Monday.

No other hospital staff, patients or visitors were injured, authorities said.

Police said they were seeking a suspect, a male, in connection with a domestic disturbance. Police found the suspect’s car outside the hospital.

Authorities said the investigation is ongoing. The hospital is based in Enid, a city of about 51,000 that sits about 100 miles northwest of Oklahoma City. The Enid hospital campus offers 183 beds across three facilities.

Hunter McKee, public information manager for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, said at a news conference Monday morning that the suspect shot at police.

“The suspect, when officers tried to approach him, fired at officers, went into the hospital, fired multiple shots,” McKee said at the news conference.

After firing at police, the suspect entered the hospital and was well inside the facility when he fatally shot the security guard. McKee said at the morning news briefing that he didn’t have the precise layout of where the suspect was in the hospital, he said the suspect “did go fairly deep into that first floor, firing shots.”

While McKee said the killing of the guard was “extremely sad,” he expressed gratitude that the incident was not even worse.

“We are very fortunate that other people were not hit,” McKee said. “We had multiple patients, multiple medical staff, here during that time and again, nobody was hurt.”

The hospital remained open for patients Monday, though authorities had asked members of the public who don’t need to be at the campus to stay clear of the facility while police were investigating.

In February, a police officer was killed in a shooting at UPMC Memorial, a 104-bed hospital near the city of York in central Pennsylvania, and several others were shot and wounded, including a doctor and a hospital staff member. Authorities later said the officer was killed by a shot from a fellow police officer, but stressed that the attacker directly caused the officer’s death, NBC News reported. The attacker was shot and killed.

Oklahoma witnessed another horrific event in 2022, when four people were shot and killed on a medical campus operated by the Saint Francis Health System in Tulsa. The victims included two physicians, a receptionist and a patient.

While such shootings are rare, doctors and nurses say they continue to encounter violence at alarming levels, and emergency department physicians and nurses say they are regularly attacked.

Eric Sean Clay, vice president of security at Memorial Hermann Health System, told Chief Healthcare Executive® in an interview in February that more hospitals are adding weapon detection systems, including metal detectors, cameras and other tools to protect patients and staff.

‘I think that's one of the things that we're going to start to really see be part of a standardized security management plan over the next three to five years,” said Clay, the former president of the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety. “My experience, they've been very effective. So I think you'll see more people start to adopt that.”

In that February interview, Clay also said that health systems need to have detailed plans to help improve safety and prevent violence, and those plans must include mechanisms for staff to report attacks or threatening behavior.

“I think you need to have a formal and comprehensive workplace violence prevention plan that really goes into the details of what that entails,” Clay said.