LAST UPDATE | 20 Nov 2018

FOUR PEOPLE HAVE died – including two female members of staff and a police officer – after a gunman opened fire at a Chicago hospital.

The attacker also died but it was not clear if he took his own life or was killed by police at Mercy Hospital on the city’s South Side, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson has said.

Mercy Hospital has confirmed that the two staff members who died were Tamara O’Neal (38) an emergency room physician and Dayna Less (25), a first year pharmacy resident who had recently graduated from Purdue University.

The police officer was identified as Samuel Jimenez (28) who joined the department in February 2017 and had recently completed his probationary period. Police said he was married and the father of three children.

The identity of the shooter was not immediately released. Authorities have said that the gunmen targeted a woman with whom he was having a relationship. 

Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed Jimenez’ death yesterday evening in what he described as a “senseless active shooter incident.”

It's with profound sadness that we share the death of PO Samuel Jimenez from tonight's senseless active shooter incident. Please pray for his family, his fellow officers & the entire #ChicagoPolice Department. Supt Eddie Johnson & @ChicagosMayor will hv a press briefing shortly pic.twitter.com/2onFeyaSDK

— Anthony Guglielmi (@AJGuglielmi) November 20, 2018

A witness named James Gray told reporters it looked as if the attacker “was turning and shooting people at random”.

The shooting apparently began as the suspect was walking with a woman near a car park. He turned and repeatedly shot the woman in the chest. He then entered the hospital and continued firing, Gray said.

TV footage showed people filing out of the hospital into a car park with their hands in the air.

“We were going about our business and waiting for our results and then I heard shots fired,” an unnamed witness told the local CBS affiliate.

“The city of Chicago lost a doctor, a pharmaceutical assistant and a police officer, all going about their day, all doing what they love,” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel told reporters yesterday. 

“This tears at the soul of our city. It is the face and consequence of evil,” he said. 

The shooting comes less than two weeks after a gunman killed 12 people in a California music bar packed with college students. 

That rampage followed the worst anti-Semitic attack in modern US history, when a gunman opened fire on worshipers at a synagogue in the US city of Pittsburgh on 27 October.

The incidents have added to the growing outcry over gun safety in the US, where there have been more than 300 mass shootings this year.

Contains reporting from © AFP 2018