According to the Morning Call in Allentown, Lehigh County District Attorney Jim Martin said a man shot and killed his wife and then himself Tuesday afternoon in the hospice ward of Lehigh Valley Hospital at 17th and Chew streets.
Martin said around 1 p.m. hospital staff on the fourth floor heard a gunshot coming from one of the hospice rooms.
When medical staff went to the room, they found a female patient had been shot and killed by her husband, who then turned the gun on himself and committed suicide, he said.
Martin said the hospital has not been evacuated and there are no plans to do that.
Just after 1 p.m., police dispatchers reported a trauma patient on the fourth floor, scanner reports say. A dispatcher later reported it as a possible homicide and a possible suicide.
On the fourth floor, which is the hospice area, seven or eight officers were in the hallway going from room to room and moving patients to another part of the hospital. An Allentown police officer told a reporter to leave the hallway and police were putting paper up on a glass door to block anyone from seeing.
Numerous police cruisers are outside the hospital, and employees and others are gathering there.
One woman, who refused to give her name, said she was on the fourth floor visiting her mother when she heard gunfire.
"We were in my mother's room and we heard two gunshots," the woman said. "We got out in the nick of time."
According to the hospital's website, those eligible for hospice care are patients who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness, those with less than six months to live and those who choose care focused on making themselves comfortable rather than curing their illness.
Helicopters are flying overhead and 17th Street is blocked heading south at Chew Street.
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