Patient shoots 2 at Las Vegas pain clinic, kills himself

LAS VEGAS—A patient denied a same-day appointment at a pain-management clinic in Las Vegas shot and injured two employees Thursday before fatally shooting himself, police said.

As other patients and staff fled, the man, who was a regular patient at the Center for Wellness and Pain Care, turned the gun on himself, police spokeswoman Laura Meltzer said. He died before police arrived.

The two employees’ injuries are “fairly minor,” Meltzer said.

Caitlyn Jones said she was one of about a dozen people in the clinic when the gunman opened fire just a few feet away from her.

“I’ve never heard something that loud in my life,” she told the Las Vegas Review-Journal . “He pointed the gun at me and I just ran.”

One woman was injured when she fell down trying to get out of the clinic, Meltzer said. She was hospitalized, but her injuries were not serious.

The names of the gunman and victims have not been released.

According to its website, the clinic offers pain management via acupuncture, aromatherapy, massage therapy, and prayer.

Patient Sammy Alonge was in a treatment room when the gunfire began. He said the nurse who had been treating him was one of the shooting victims.

“When I heard the first gunshot, I thought it was a bottle or something on the floor, like something just popped,” Alonge told the Review-Journal. “When I started hearing that ‘pop, pop, pop,’ I was so scared.”

He tried and failed to break a window to get out, so he hid under a table as he heard at least eight shots ring out.

When the door opened moments later he thought it was the gunman coming for him, but it was a woman saying the shooter was dead and the crisis over.

“I’m still in shock,” Alonge said. JPV

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TAGS: Crime, police story