Wounded Man Slain in Hospital : Gangs: Victim was injured Monday in one of four drive-by shootings in San Bernardino. Authorities say killing is virtually unprecedented.

A suspected gang member who was wounded earlier this week in a San Bernardino drive-by shooting was shot and killed in his San Bernardino County Medical Center bed on Christmas Eve by an unknown assailant.

Authorities said Kendrick Lavelle Wills, 22, was shot about 8:40 a.m. Thursday by a man who ran from the hospital grounds. Wills, identified by police as a member of a San Bernardino gang, had been admitted to the hospital after being wounded in the buttocks Monday in one of four apparently gang-related shootings that rocked the community.

Thursday’s shooting stunned hospital administrators and employees and was the latest in a string of violent incidents to plague Southern California medical facilities in recent years.

In Los Angeles County, public hospitals have installed metal detectors and have increased security surveillance after violence broke out between gang members in hospital corridors. At White Memorial Hospital last year, for example, gang members sprayed the emergency room entrance with bullets, injuring one bystander.

Workers were also shot to death two years ago in the Mission Bay Memorial Hospital in San Diego and the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles.

But San Bernardino authorities say the slaying of a hospital patient in his room is virtually unprecedented.

“I’ve been in the public hospital business for 25 years both here and in Chicago and traditionally public hospitals are neutral turf,” county hospital administrator Charles Jervis said. “In all my years we have never had an incident like this between gang members.” Wills, who was housed alone in an unguarded room in the hospital’s one-story annex, was not thought to need special protection, hospital officials said Thursday. “This man was not under arrest and we’re not a locked facility,” hospital spokeswoman Helen Ramirez said. “It was not an issue with us certainly.”

Hospital employees quickly summoned San Bernardino police, security guards and doctors on duty in the 288-bed public health facility when the shots were fired.

“It was quite a ruckus in the emergency room,” hospital messenger Kim Taylor said. “Our security people were unarmed but they ran to the scene anyway. The doctors in the emergency room ran too. It was quite a mess.”

When police arrived, they found the body of Wills in his room.

“I don’t know if he was asleep but I know there wasn’t a struggle,” police spokeswoman Brenda Shaw said. “There are indications this shooting and the one Monday are related.”

Shaw would not disclose the type of gun used in the hospital or how many bullets were fired.

Witnesses described the man running from the hospital grounds as 5-foot-7, weighing 150 pounds, and wearing a beanie, a blue jacket and brown pants.

Shortly afterward, police transported several non-mobile patients in an ambulance to a nearby intersection where a vehicle had been stopped with several suspects inside. But the suspects were released when the witnesses said they could not identify any of them.

No one has been arrested in Monday’s shooting, police said.