Four Active Shooter Situations Unfolded Simultaneously In The United States Yesterday
When will somebody do something?
Vineyard Perspective / Shutterstock.com Many people have likely already heard the news that there was a mass shooting in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that left four people dead before the suspect turned the gun on himself, marking the fifth death.
However, the country saw three more active shooter situations unfolding that hardly made the mainstream news because these occurrences have become a normal part of our daily lives.
Active shooters opened fire in Oklahoma, California and Pennsylvania.
Seven people are dead, two are injured, one of the suspects has escaped, and we still have a gun problem that isn’t being addressed.
According to several federal and police sources who spoke to CNN at the scene of the Tulsa shooting, the shooter carried out the mass shooting that left four dead with an AR-15 — the widely debated firearm that many are seeking to ban in the United States.
Tulsa police Captain Richard Meulenberg also told CNN that they had found a semiautomatic pistol along with the rifle, but it’s unclear if the handgun had been fired.
"It was just madness inside, with hundreds of rooms and hundreds of people trying to get out of the building," Meulenberg told CNN.
Police responded to the scene within minutes of receiving the report that a man with a firearm had entered the building and started shooting, but by then it was too late.
"He very purposefully went to this location, went to a very specific floor, and shot with very specific purpose," he said. "This was not a random shooting by this individual."
Elsewhere, in Pittston Township, Pennsylvania, a 20-year-old woman had been shot in the back twice in front of the Envy Nails nail salon.
The suspect is a 37-year-old man from New York and has since been captured, but has not offered a motive for the shooting, claiming he wasn’t the one that did it.
“Hey, FBI guy,” said the suspect, according to court paperwork, “don’t look at me like I just committed a murder. Do your (expletive) homework. She got shot with a 9, I’m carrying a 32 and a 40 and one of them doesn’t have bullets.”
Onlookers recalled the immense police force that had arrived at the scene within minutes working rapidly to attain any and all information in order to dole out justice and ensure the safety of the public.
“Cops started coming from everywhere,” Dana Anderson from Wyoming told WBRE. “The cops were out with their guns, looking around, you can tell that they were looking for something or someone. Ambulances started coming, and then the ambulance left in a hurry.”
In Los Angeles, California, a male high school student was shot in the leg.
The incident is believed to have been a drive-by shooting conducted by a man in a green Honda Accord.
While police believe that the incident was gang-related and the student is in stable condition, other students express the fears they had after thinking something like this would never happen in their area.
"The worst way to end high school," said one student to CBS News. "I never thought I would experience something like this, especially not at my school - the place where I thought I was safe."
Ulysses S. Grant High School went into lockdown for an unknown duration, and once police deemed the area safe, the lockdown was lifted around 4:15 pm.
The suspect, however, remains at large.
In Dayton, Ohio, an inmate killed a security guard.
The unidentified inmate from the Montgomery County Jail was sent to the emergency room in order to receive medical treatment when he took the gun from a security guard, fired at him, and then turned the gun on himself.
“We don’t know exactly how he was able to get ahold of the security guard’s gun,” Dayton Police Major Brian Johns said, according to IBTimes. “We just know about 9:45 this morning, that’s when this actually happened.”
The security guard, unfortunately, succumbed to his injuries and passed away, leaving two people dead.
It’s unclear what the inmate had been admitted to the hospital for, but he was being held at the jail for violating his probation.
These four shootings likely overshadow many other shootings that occurred in places where they’re considered a “common occurrence” and hadn’t seen the light of day in mainstream media.
As a nation, we have been conditioned to only feel horrified by the most deadly, most gruesome shootings. So much so that hearing about a handful of lives lost seems insignificant in comparison.
More than 90% of the population wants some form of gun control, something to reel in the deaths just a little bit, but the issue grows larger and tensions continue to bubble.
Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. He is a graduate of Rutgers University. Keep up with his rants about current events on Twitter.