JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A patient accidentally fired a gun inside St. Vincent's Medical Center in Riverside on Thursday morning, but no one was hurt.
The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office said 68-year-old Kyle Bragg, of Glynn County, Ga., a patient in the hospital, was disoriented when he took the gun out of his wife's purse and it went off just after 11 a.m. The slug landed in the wall of the room's shower.
Police say the gun was in his wife's purse, and his wife, 64-year-old Linda Bragg, had a permit to carry it. The couple were the only two in the room at the time.
Police say there was no security threat, although the second floor of the hospital was briefly placed on lockdown.
"The unit where the patient was was on lockdown, which is standard protocol, so the staff did a great job and responded very well," St. Vincent's spokesman David Meyer said.
Detectives were investigating the incident. It was unclear if any charges would be filed.
"The aggravated battery unit is here doing the initial investigation, but at this time, we don't believe any criminal intent was involved," JSO spokeswoman Melissa Bujeda said.
Police say it is legal for someone to have a gun in the hospital as long as that person has a permit. A spokesman for St. Vincent's, however, said it is against hospital policy to bring a gun into the facility.
"Firearms are prohibited from the campus," Meyer said. "Obviously, this individual did have it in her purse. It's our understanding that she forgot that the firearm was in her purse."
Investigators and hospital staff said they know the situation could have been much worse.
"When you leave a gun in the wrong hands, sometimes bad things can happen, and in this situation, fortunately no one did get hurt," Bujeda said.