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A police officer was shot in a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, hotel during a surprise attack Thursday morning.
Three officers responded to a call around 7:39 a.m. from a Holiday Inn guest who claimed he killed someone inside a hotel room, Police Chief Bill Schultz said during a press conference.
Three responding officers couldn’t make contact with anyone in the room before they entered. When the door flew open, a suspect opened fire, according to Schultz.
Police returned fire. One officer was shot, and a second was injured in the gun battle, the chief said.
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A police officer was shot outside this hotel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Thursday morning. (Google Street View)
The officer, who took a bullet, was treated at an area hospital and has since been released, the chief said.
Another officer was treated at the scene for minor injuries. The third officer escaped unscathed.
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“Officer down, officer down,” can be heard in the 911 dispatch recording, obtained and reviewed by Fox News Digital.
It showed the chaotic aftermath, as law enforcement prepared for a potential active shooter situation.
“Can you do us a huge favor and get everyone out of the water treatment plant directly behind the (hotel)? There’s a potential (danger) with a southern-facing window,” an officer is heard telling dispatch around 8:57 a.m.
A police officer was shot in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Thursday. (Hoberman Collection/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
At that time, law enforcement didn’t know if the suspect was dead or alive.
“Is the subject contained? Anyone else standing?” an officer asks dispatch about three minutes after law enforcement cleared the treatment plant behind the hotel.
Shortly after 9 a.m., an officer told dispatch, “The suspect is down. Everybody take it easy getting there.”
SWAT teams found the gunman dead in the hotel room. No one else was in the room, according to the chief, who said the suspect was “a local, not a visitor.”
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VideoThe gunman was identified as Karl Chludinsky, a 45-year-old resident from the city of Margate, Florida, about 15 miles north of the crime scene.
The state Department of Law Enforcement takes over the investigation, and the three officers who fired their weapons are placed on administrative leave, all of which is standard procedure for officer-involved shootings.
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The area around 17th Street and 15th Avenue intersection, where the Holiday Inn is located, was blocked off in all directions on Thursday afternoon.
Armored trucks were parked outside the hotel all day, and dozens of police vehicles were concentrated in and around the crime scene.
Well before backup arrived, hotel guests were evacuated from the building.
One guest told the Sun Sentinel that the shooting appeared to start on the pool deck right above the hotel’s parking garage.
“We’re moving down here. We were waking up to have breakfast at the hotel, and staff pushed everyone into an event room,” hotel guest Alexis Boettcher, who is visiting from Cleveland, told the local newspaper.
“I came downstairs. They told me there was an active shooter and I couldn’t go back in the building.”
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Fort Lauderdale is in the midst of a busier-than-usual spring break this year, after an influx of party seekers ventured up Florida’s coast because of Miami Beach’s “break up” with the annual March madness.
Law enforcement have not said if there is any connection between spring break and the shooting.
Before this incident, Fort Lauderdale police told Fox News Digital there were 13 spring break-related arrests from March 1 to 17, and it has been a peaceful spring break season, with no major incidents.
Fox News Digital’s Brooke Curto contributed to this report.
Chris Eberhart is a crime and US news reporter for Fox News Digital. Email tips to chris.eberhart@fox.com or on Twitter @ChrisEberhart48.
