Shootings at hospital leave couple dead

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Sep 30, 2004 | by Laura Hancock Deseret Morning News

MURRAY -- An elderly man apparently shot and killed his wife, then turned the gun on himself Wednesday at Cottonwood Hospital, police said.

Authorities did not release the name of the man or woman, who was a patient, because their family had not been notified.

A hospital employee entered the third-floor room in the northeast part of the 228-bed hospital about 6:15 p.m. and found two bodies, hospital spokesman Jess Gomez said.

It was unknown how long they had been dead, but the hospital employee probably found the couple "shortly thereafter," Gomez said during a press conference Wednesday night.

No one heard the shooting. The woman was the only patient in the room, only feet away from a nurses' unit. The room's door was closed, Gomez said.

"Everything we have at this point is it was a murder-suicide," Murray police detective Rob Hall said.

The man apparently entered the hospital during visiting hours with a concealed handgun. He walked through the third floor, which authorities only would describe as a general treatment area, and went into his wife's room, Gomez said.

"There's not a check-in process" for visitors, Gomez said.

The man shot his wife in bed once at close range before taking his own life, Gomez said.

Hospital officials would not discuss why the woman was a patient, citing federal medical privacy laws.

Hours after the shooting, police were processing the hospital room as they do at any crime scene -- taking photos, writing and collecting evidence, Hall said.

A representative from the Utah State Medical Examiner's Office was also on scene. Grief counselors were meeting with employees who worked in the immediate area of the woman's room, Gomez said.

Many hospital employees were unaware of the murder-suicide because no emergency protocols were activated. No one was evacuated, officials said, because no one was in danger. Many employees said they had no idea what happened until family and friends called them at work to repeat news reports.

Physicians leaving the hospital for the night said they were saddened by the tragedy.

"You'd expect there would be better security," said Dr. George Middleton, a urologist who has practiced at the hospital for 25 years.

Middleton described the hospital as a cluster of buildings connected by walkways. He said tight security throughout the hospital was lifted after the Olympics, except in the emergency room.

He wonders whether metal detectors would prevent such acts of violence.

But Dr. Steven Rokeach, chairman of the hospital's internal medicine department, doesn't believe the hospital should follow security practices similar to airports and courthouses.

"I don't think we would like to work in that kind of environment," Rokeach said.

Gomez said the shooting had nothing to do with a failure in security.

The hospital has security guards and surveillance cameras, efforts that are "fairly common" in hospitals of similar size and function. Some security details vary, but there are no magnetometers in Intermountain Health Care hospitals, he said. Cottonwood Hospital is part of IHC.

In 1991, Richard Worthington entered Alta View Hospital with guns and explosives. He demanded to see a doctor who had performed a tubal ligation on his wife two years earlier. The ordeal ended 18 hours later when Worthington released eight hostages, including newborn babies, and surrendered to police -- but after nurse Karla Roth was shot and killed.

Worthington hanged himself in a Nevada prison in 1993.

E-mail: lhancock@desnews.comI>