A Jacksonville police officer was critically wounded when a man shot him outside Baptist Medical Center South on Tuesday night — the third officer shot this year, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.

The shooting occurred after an off-duty officer working at Baptist checked on a suspicious car about 9:30 p.m. The officer tried to stop the driver, but he fled.

Other officers arrived and penned in the suspect’s car, but he shot one officer in the face as the officer tried to get inside, Sheriff T.K. Waters said. Five other officers shot and killed the man.

“That is something I have never seen in the 32 years that I have been working here,” Waters said, referring to the shootings of police officers. “This is the third one, and I have been sheriff since November. It’s getting very ridiculous. It’s very dangerous, and it’s concerning.”

“We want to make sure that our officers and our citizens know that they did the right thing tonight. They made sure that that individual did not go into the hospital.”

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Baptist locked down the hospital in response to the shooting. Jacksonville’s Fraternal Order of Police tweeted that “attacks on law enforcement must stop. They are a stain on the fabric of society.”

Police did not identify the injured officer or the gunman. Waters said he did not know the motive for the shooting. An initial check into the gunman’s criminal record showed only a speeding ticket, Waters said.

All officers involved in the shooting are on administrative leave as the State Attorney’s Office and Sheriff’s Office investigate, Waters said.

The last officer injured in a shooting was in late March, when Officer Malink Daricaud was shot at a home on Ridgeview Avenue, as investigators prepared to question a man who had fled from a traffic stop a week earlier.

In the latest case, the suspicious man rolled down the window of his car, held out an apparent gun and said “Shoot me,” Waters said. Officers did not.

The vehicle then continued forward slightly, pulled up next to a police car and fired one shot into the car.

The officer in that car did not fire back because they were in a hospital parking lot, Waters said. Other officers arrived as the gunman drove off, hit police cars and crashed into a stop sign.

Police yelled for the man to get out of his car, but he would not, Waters said. One officer tried to open the back door of the gunman’s car, and the man fired through a window. The bullet hit the officer in the face and ended in his chest area.

The officer was hospitalized in critical but stable condition.