Los Angeles, April 17 (Inditop) A hospital worker killed his boss and another manager at the Long Beach Memorial Medical Centre in Los Angeles Thursday, and then turned the gun on himself, the LA Times reported Friday.
Another man was wounded in the shooting which occurred at the Atlantic Avenue hospital around noon Thursday.
The gunman was identified as Mario Ramirez, 50, who had been a pharmacy technician at the hospital, a police spokeswoman said.
The victims were Hugo Bustamante, 46, and Kelly Hales, 56.
Bustamante had been the pharmacy manager at the hospital, and Hales was executive director of the hospital’s outpatient pharmacy, hospital spokeswoman Stacie Crompton-Hime told the newspaper.
The paper reported that Ramirez went first to the pharmacy, near the emergency room and outpatient area of the hospital, and fatally shot Bustamante, firing at least twice at his face. He then went in search of Hales, whom he confronted outside the emergency room.
LA police declined to comment on a possible motive for the rampage. The LA Times reported that friends and co-workers of the shooter, who described Ramirez as a congenial man with a wife and children, said he had recently become aware of reports of pending layoffs.
Crompton-Hime said: “There were no signs or indication that something like this could happen,” she said. “I don’t believe there was anything we could have done.”
Thursday’s shooting was the latest in a series of multiple-killings in the US in recent months.
On April 3, a Vietnamese immigrant killed 14 people including himself at a social centre in New York State.
