LAPORTE — Dr. Tamara O’Neal, a LaPorte native, is the latest victim of a mass shooting in the United States. She and two other victims lost their lives after a gunman opened fire at a hospital in Chicago.

Mercy Hospital, where O’Neal worked, is where this all happened.

Four died in all, including a Chicago police officer.

Her cousin Turrell O’Neal, who still lives here in Michiana, was hurt when he learned the news that his cousin was shot and killed while on her way to work.

“I was in shock, I really didn’t believe it,” he says. “I woke up this morning and I scrolled over on my phone [and] it was on the CNN app.”

It all started with a personal argument in the parking lot between Tamara O’Neal and the shooter, who we now know was Tamara’s ex-fiance.

Turrell said he and his family knew of the guy but didn’t know he’d create this now-national story, where three people are left with just memories of their loved ones.

One of those memories Tricia Wainscott remembers was graduating with Tamara at LaPorte High School as part of the class of 1998, where a school yearbook shows off Tamara’s gleaming white smile.

“That smile is the same smile I saw on that picture, sadly,” says Wainscott.

It’s now unfortunately a picture of a life taken to soon by gun violence.

“Everything in her life, it led up to walking in her calling, and when she finally become a doctor, it was the greatest thing in the world,” Turrell remembers. “She was walking in her purpose.”

Source: WNDU