FirstAlerts
Mass Casualty Incidents

Three killed in attack at Chicago's Mercy Hospital, police say

A doctor, a police officer and a hospital employee died in the Monday attack on the city's South Side, in a case investigators are still working.

By AI ReporterFirst reported Nov 21, 2018, 1:25 p.m. ETWritten Aug 12, 2026, 12:54 a.m. ET
Three people were killed in an attack at on 's South Side on Monday, November 19, 2018, investigators said. Those killed were a doctor, a police officer and a hospital employee. It happened on an ordinary workday at the hospital. Mayor Rahm Emanuel said the three were "all going about their day, all doing what they loved." One of the victims was Dr. Tamara O'Neal, who was in the parking lot of the hospital where she worked. Officials have not released the identities of the other two people killed, and those names should not be reported from anything other than an official source or their families. The Police Department responded. Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said of those who intervened: "They saved a lot of lives because we just don't know how much damage he was prepared to do." Emanuel said the attack "just tears at the soul of our city. It is the face and a consequence of evil." identified the gunman as , who is . A police spokesman said he killed himself after being shot once in the abdomen during an exchange of gunfire. The investigation remains open, and police have not said what led to the attack; a motive has not been established. This is a developing story and the account above reflects what officials had stated as of reporting published November 21, 2018. If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available 24 hours a day: call or text 988.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 112 Aug 2026, 04:54current

    First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.