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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies stand outside after staff and patients were evacuated from Kaiser Permanente Downey Medical Center, following reports of someone with a weapon at the facility today in Downey, Calif. Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials say a suspect is in custody and deputies and police officers are methodically searching the complex.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A man in a motorized wheelchair and a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy wait outside after staff and patients were evacuated from Kaiser Permanente Downey Medical Center, following reports of someone with a weapon at the facility today in Downey, Calif. Los Angeles County sheriff’s officials say a suspect is in custody and deputies and police officers are methodically searching the complex.
LOS ANGELES >> A man who caused a disturbance at a Southern California hospital was taken into custody and a handgun was recovered today, but there’s no evidence that he fired any shots, authorities said.
Nobody was hurt in the incident at Kaiser Permanente Downey Medical Center near Los Angeles, Downey Police Chief Carl Charles said.
The suspect threw a chair through a window before pulling out a handgun at a medical office building separate from the main hospital, Charles said. The man was unarmed when he surrendered without incident a short time later just outside the building. A gun was later found.
The man was described as a 34-year-old resident of nearby Lynwood, and there were unconfirmed reports that he was a patient at the hospital, Charles said.
Witness Amber Boughner said the man was irate and demanded to be let into a locked office before kicking walls and shattering the window. Boughner said she didn’t see a weapon or hear gunshots.
“The security guard told me there was a gun, so I ran,” she told KABC-TV. Boughner said she and others locked themselves in a break room before officers let them out.
Police and Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies cleared the building room by room.
TV news helicopters showed people calmly walking out of the facility and numerous police vehicles around it.
Employee Edwin Olvera told The Associated Press his office was locked down, and he had “honestly never been more afraid.”
“I heard no shots. I heard that there was someone with a weapon at our office,” Olvera said.
Jim Branchick, a Kaiser area manager, said the incident happened in a medical office building, not the hospital proper.
Branchick said he did not know how the man got the gun into the building.
The medical center does active-shooter drills, and personnel followed protocol when the “code silver” signal for such an event was declared, he said. People went into rooms, closed doors and followed police commands.
Downey is a city of about 110,000 people southeast of downtown Los Angeles.
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