Active Shooter

Oh right.  You are probably looking to me for information about the active shooter at my old hospital, who was himself shot and soon died. He wounded someone when he came into the lobby, but he never made it any further, as  "state trooper assigned to the hospital" shot and killed him.  The security office is right off the lobby, and it seems that the trooper was not there at that moment but got there quickly. That would mean that one of the office staff was manning the office, and trooper was quickly called back and got there.  There were any number of very close places he would have been likely to be.

The identity of the shooter I would not even hazard a guess at.  It might turn out to be a previous patient or family of a patient that I recognise, but I know nothing.

I left almost exactly three years ago, and at that time the chief for the hospital would have been Frank Harris.  The NHSP assign people round-the-clock, but it was a weekday during business hours, so ordinarily that would have been Frank. The office staff person would have been Janice, and maybe still is, because she wasn't anywhere near retirement age. Eric would have been coming on for the next shift, because it was around 3:30pm. So you can follow it over the next few days and see if any of those names show up.

I liked Frank very much. He was 20 years a USMC MP and brought a real professionalism to the department when he came, maybe around 2010. He was skilled at de-escalating rather than confronting dangerous people, but I many times so him skip that step altogether and assert control quickly.  A cheerful funny guy. It looks like he, or his equivalent if it was someone else, assessed that there was to be little or no hesitation.  Most likely, one command was given, and when it was not obeyed, the shooter was shot, as he had already injured someone and shown his intent. (On the units, they would be tazered* not shot with live ammunition. though I suppose if they had somehow gotten a real firearm onto a unit, the protocol might be different. I saw fake guns and a starter's pistol make it onto a unit, but never anything with live ammunition.)

There was  U-Haul in the parking lot - not a common sight at a psychiatric hospital, to put it mildly - that is being investigated, likely for explosives.

I found it irritating to listen to the questions after the announcement by Colonel Mark Hall. I guess it's their job to try and extract some nugget of information to report to their sources, but what they were asking was pretty obviously not going to be something the NHSP would answer. Yet reporter after reporter kept saying things like "do we know anything about the motive the shooter may have had?" I suppose if I did that for a job I would understand better why it has to be that way.

*The verb is not supposed to be tazed, even though that is what is most usually said.  "Taser" is a brand name, and companies get sticky about such things. So you get a little insider knowledge to boot.  We would get corrected on the spot for getting that wrong in speech, and there was real annoyance if you put it in writing.