By Canadian Press

Man charged with shooting officer at South Carolina hospital

Apr 13, 2019 | 10:11 AM

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A shooting inside a South Carolina hospital on Thursday left both a police officer and the suspected gunman wounded, authorities said, in what was the second shooting inside a hospital in the state in two days.

The Thursday shooting happened around 2 a.m., when 27-year-old Kevin Boyce Patterson was spotted with a gun, visiting the emergency room at the Laurens County Memorial Hospital in Clinton, authorities said.

An arrest warrant issued Thursday night said Patterson dragged his father at gunpoint across the waiting room. When a Greenville Health Authority Police Department officer and a state trooper started to ask the man questions, he shot the police officer and tried to run, said Sarah Moore, a spokeswoman for Prisma Health, which runs the hospital.

The officer fired back, hitting Boyce in the arm, investigators said.

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The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division charged Boyce with attempted murder, kidnapping and pointing and presenting a firearm. He was booked in the Laurens County jail. Records did not indicate whether he had a lawyer who could comment.

Moore said the police officer was treated and released. The officer’s name was not released as of Thursday.

The shooting in Laurens County happened a day after a nurse was shot in a hospital emergency room in Orangeburg. According to a police report, 23-year-old Abrian Dayquan Sabb came to the Regional Medical Center with a long gun and shot the nurse in the abdomen Wednesday morning.

A hospital security guard had Sabb in custody by the time the first Orangeburg County deputies arrived three minutes later, a police report said. Sabb had come to the centre just a day before, along with family members who were trying to get him mental health treatment.

State Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter said Wednesday that the family was told to come back because there weren’t enough treatment beds.

Before the hospital shooting, deputies said they encountered Sabb after his girlfriend called 911 to report that he had fired a gun while she tried to take it from him. The officers gave the gun to Sabb’s father, according to the police report.

The gun used in the hospital shooting Wednesday appeared to have been stolen from a nearby home just minutes earlier, deputies said.

Sabb, 23, is charged with attempted murder and possession of a weapon during the commission of violent crime. Police and court records did not list an attorney for him.

Sabb was ordered to remain in jail at a court hearing Thursday. One of the nurse’s family members said at the hearing that the nurse was in critical condition. The family member did not identify herself.

Jeffrey Collins, The Associated Press