TULSA, Okla. — Four Tulsa officers spoke publicly for the first time Monday about their response to the deadly shooting at the Natalie Building on the Saint Francis Hospital campus earlier this year.
Tulsa Police Sgt. Brian Liang and officers Micah Baxter, Carter McQuigg and Jon Grafton answered the first call of "shots fired" on June 1, 2022. Investigators later said 45-year-old Michael Louis had showed up at the Natalie Building with the intention to kill Dr. Preston Phillips, killing three others in the process — Dr. Stephanie Husen, medical assistant Amanda Glenn and patient William Love.
Louis killed himself before officers could get to him. Those first four responding officers sat down Monday with 2 News Oklahoma to talk about the moments before, during and after they entered the building where the shooting happened.
Arriving at the Natalie Building
The first 911 call came in at 4:53 p.m. about shots fired at the Natalie Building on the Saint Francis Health System campus near 61st Street and Yale. Two minutes later, Tulsa police officers Jon Grafton and Carter McQuigg arrived.
"There are some times where you say, this probably isn't anything and there are other times where you think this is legit," Grafton said. "For some reason, this one felt legit."
The two officers described an eerie silence as they immediately went inside the Natalie Building to find evidence of what had just happened.
"And there's kind of a haze about eye level, and it smelled like an indoor shooting range," Grafton said. "And then we saw a bunch of broken glass and bullet casings."
The two officers said they moved quickly through the maze of the Warren Clinic Orthopedic Surgery and Sports Medicine Center. No calls had gone out about any more shots at that point.
"There was some blood coming out from underneath the doorway and that hole so we decided to stop there and hold we had because we weren't hearing anything active at that time," McQuigg said. "It was at that time, I think Baxter joined up with us. And then we heard a gunshot and we all just moved."
Officer Micah Baxter and Sgt. Brian Liang joined them in rushing to help search for the gunman and any victims, only to find two people dead and a woman hiding under a desk.
"I was the only officer supervisor with the shield at the time so I went up with a shield and realized that he had matched the description that was given to us and he had a rifle and a pistol on him," Liang said.
Confronting a killer
Liang, Baxter, McQuigg and Grafton were the first of four TPD officers to respond, followed by several others with the department, sheriff's office and other local and federal law enforcement.
"There's no discussion of if we're going to go in — it's we will go in," Liang said. "I had my pistol on me and that's what I grabbed. I had a pair of gloves. I put those on just in case and we walked in."
Grafton said they announced themselves as Tulsa police and that's when they heard the gunshot and started running toward it.
"I guess the more you think about it, I think the more [stopping to coordinate a plan] would probably slow you down or make you question what's going on," Grafton said. "If you just rely on your training, then it's, it's just reaction I guess just doing it."
While searching for the killer, McQuigg said he found someone hiding and got her out.
"I don't know if I remember if our suspect was down or not, and she was very thankful, McQuigg said. "I just told her to hold on to the back of me. Hold on tight, and then we just got her to the exit."
Officers found the gunman Michael Louis dead. He'd shot himself around the time officers announced themselves on the building's second floor
Preparing for tragedy
The officers who ran in when gunshots went off at the Natalie Building credit their training for helping them respond quickly.
"There's no time to wait," Baxter said. "SWAT could take... we don't know how long to get there, and so we just go in as soon as we can."
Eight days before this active shooter situation in Tulsa, the nation mourned after the shooting at a Uvalde school where law enforcement waited more than an hour before trying to step in and stop the gunman. Grafton said his fellow officers' willingness to act quickly came with their training.
"I think every one of us in here has the best training that anybody could have in our position," Grafton said.
"It doesn't matter if he has a rifle and our body armor stops pistols only," Liang said. "We're going in and that's what we're gonna do."
Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum called the first responders heroes in his recent State of the City address. The officers say they wouldn't call themselves that.
"You know, I think we all sign up to do this job," McQuigg said. "For the same reason I want to help people. And every day is a different story. And this just happened to be the story of it for that day."
See the full raw interview here:
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