Kendra Thompson Sasser(GENEVA, Ill.) — A prison inmate, who was being treated at an Illinois hospital, is dead after he managed to gain control of an officer’s weapon and hold a nurse hostage on Saturday, according to officials.
Lt. Pat Gengler of the Kane County Sheriff’s Office said Tywon Salters was confined to a small area of the emergency room at Delnor Hospital in Geneva, Illinois. Hostage negotiators and SWAT teams were in the hospital talking to the suspect, but when negotiations broke down, Gengler said the SWAT team stormed the room and shot and killed the suspect.
The nurse who was held hostage was uninjured and is now with family, the official said.
Salters, 21 and from Chicago, was an inmate at Kane County Jail and had been treated at Delnor Hospital since May 8, according to Gengler.
The emergency room was evacuated when the incident began and the rest of the hospital was operating as normal at the time, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office said.
Virgene Galloway told ABC News she was registering for the ER when she was escorted from the lobby to the bathroom, and told to get into a stall and lock it. She said she heard a nurse yell, “Code silver,” which she knew, because she works at a hospital, meant “active shooter.”
“There were a few people shaken up by it, so I was just trying to calm the person next to me,” Galloway said to ABC News.
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