I checked, he's fine. One of my aunts works there too. She's off today, but she would have been in the area of the shooting (cafeteria) if she had been there today. Right around the time of the shooting too. I called her house to make sure she was ok and not at work.

Apparently some crazy guy was acting...crazy. A patient saw him and called the local cops to deal with him (not sure why hospital security wasnt called) and when the cops got there. Crazy guy got mad (not surprised) and shot the cops. They shot him back. Apparently the cops are only minorly injured, but crazy guy is either dead or in surgery. (surgery is where my dad works)

The hospital is in a not-nice-at-all part of town. It's where all the gang bangers go in their ghetto ambulances when they get shot.

I'm just glad my aunt wasnt working today and that my dad eats lunch on one of the patios on the upper floors.

Very scary and way too close!!

I noticed that the shooting made national news. Fox News had a mention about it.

More info. Last night, some guy in a county outside of Omaha had beaten his wife and then left in a pickup to go to her parents house. (who, I assume, live in Omaha).

He got to an area in Southwest or South central Omaha, which is right on the line with another city called LaVista. LaVista police saw him and started chasing. That was really early this morning. He crashed his truck into a light pole and got away. (carrying a handgun and a rifle. Wouldnt they have noticed a guy with a rifle walking into the hospital?)

He somehow made it across town to the hospital. The witnesses have been saying he was on a pay phone right by the cafeteria. Not sure what was going on, but he was yelling into the phone and scaring some of the patients and others in the cafeteria. Someone said a patient called 911.

Two female officers show up, and asked some guy in the hall where the pay phones were. He told them where the phones were and the next thing that witness knew, there was a gun battle in or near the cafeteria. (I havent been there for about a year, not exactly sure if the payphones are right next to the cafeteria)

The crazy guy shot the cops. One in the leg, and another one in the foot. He ended up taking four rounds to the chest, and someone said that a taser was used too.

I guess he was talking about shooting the wife's family or some such thing. I'm just glad the cops were good shots and that my dad and aunt werent in that part of the hospital at the time.

edit:

Now they're saying the guy actually lived, but he's extremely critical and might not survive. He was apparently in Omaha to kill his mother-in-law and sister-in-law and then found out his wife was at the hospital where the shooting took place. (he had beaten her last night at their home in another county) So he was probably there at the hospital to try to take her out. Good thing he wasnt able to get at his in-laws, and that the police got to him before he could find the wife.

One of the news reports I read said that the police asked a groundskeeper to go inside the hospital and see if a man fitting some description was at the pay phones. (which I think are just inside the door, and not at the cafeteria) Groundskeeper went back outside and told them he was there. The cops went in, said something to him and he just turned and fired. They fired back with a taser and their guns. One of the cops got shot in the hip and the other one in the foot or the leg.

I'm getting tired of people shooting up the city. First that guy shot up the mall around Xmas several years ago, and now my dad's place of work has a shooting. (not the first time for them either...but the last two were suicides and no one was around for those shootings other than the suicidal persons)

My son was talking about this on Facebook. He drives by there on his way to work (Auto Zone). Glad your family wasn't too close to the excitement!

Me too!

What I thought was interesting/slightly weird on one of the local channels. One of them mentioned comments from people they'd interviewed. One was a woman from Canada who was in town because her kid had a liver transplant...and now she was all worried that there had been a shooting at the hospital.

The reason it was weird. The hospital my dad works at isnt a transplant center. That's the other university hospital in town that does the transplants. That woman had no clue which hospital she was at. It's kind of weird that the tv station didnt catch the mistake too...it's well known that the transplant center is the only one in town, and that it wasnt the one that the shooting was at.

In the Canadian lady's defense, my dad's sister-in-law works at the transplant center, and she said that their pagers all went off when the shooting was reported, and they went on alert just in case the guy caused a lot of traumas at the other hospital. So she might have actually thought the shooting happened where she was at because of that hospital going on alert.

They finally came out about the shooting. There were actually four cops there. Two lady cops, two male cops. They were all involved in the shooting. The crazy guy got a couple of shots off and hit two of the cops (minor wounds) and all four cops fired at him. He had four gunshot wounds.

I had been texting my dad what they were saying on the news, and the news was about 5 hours early on the time of death on the shooter, apparently his mother called them and reported that he'd died...the trauma unit actually tried to keep him alive for 6 hours. Before he got shot, he was calling relatives on the payphones in the hospital and telling them he wanted to shoot himself in the head and donate his organs. (btw, his organs didnt get donated. He probably had too many injuries to several of his important organs)

The shooter knew a bunch of prominent people in Nebraska. He had a hunting lodge and had taught a bunch of politicians and local business people how to hunt. They're all talking about how out of character it was for this guy to go postal. He wasnt a drug user as far as anyone has said. I wonder if we'll ever know why he did what he did.

The picture that they showed of him, he looked like he was a nice guy. He has all of those politicians and prominent people freaked out and scratching their heads about what happened to make him do what he did.

I'm wondering if something happened between him and his wife and it somehow pushed him over the edge. It sounds like he had a lot of rage against her if he beat her bad enough that she had to go to one of the two trauma centers in town for her injuries, and that he was trying to get to her mother's house to kill his m-in-law and his s-in-law. Plus he WALKED about 9 or 10 miles to get to the hospital to try to kill his wife.

If they ever report the psychology of what happened, I'll be really interested to read it. I like reading about what makes spree killers do what they do. (yes, I have weird interests)