A shooting in an office complex in Phoenix has left three people injured, one of them in critical condition. Shots rang out in the lobby of the complex at about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, prompting a response from a police SWAT team and a search of the building for the suspect. The whereabouts of the shooter, described as a white man in his 60s, are still unknown.
“I heard the shots and that’s it,” said Karen Frasier, a receptionist working in the complex, told USA Today. “I wouldn’t know a gunshot if it jumped up and bit me because I’d never heard one. But some other people heard them and said that’s what they were.”
Workers who began evacuating shortly after the shots were fired were ordered to return to the building, lock themselves inside of their offices, and stay away from windows while police cleared the building.
“Everyone was just scared, honestly, just scared,” Navika Sood, assistant director of nursing at First At Home Health Services said, according to Fox News.
Though police have not specified a motive for Wednesday’s shooting, it has been suggested that a verbal dispute in the building led the suspect to open fire. “This doesn’t appear to be a random type of incident,” Phoenix Police Sgt. Tommy Thompson told USA Today.
Fox News reports that police later surrounded a house seven miles away from the crime scene, claiming that it was connected to the shooting. Once there, police talked to an individual who was not identified as the shooter.
Today, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), testified at a congressional hearing on gun violence. Giffords was among 18 shot during a political rally in 2011. She suffered a gunshot wound to the head.
While speaking to a Senate panel, Gifford’s husband Mark Kelly notified the lawmakers of the shooting in Phoenix, making mention of the suspect’s multiple victims.
