Colorado Springs – The head of Memorial Hospital’s emergency room said Tuesday that the hospital followed standard protocol during the psychiatric screening of a woman who a day later purchased a gun at a pawnshop and then killed her two boys and herself.
“We are saddened by the tragic deaths of Julie Rifkin and her two sons,” Dr. Marilyn Gifford said. “Julie worked with us. We really thought of her as part of our family and one of our co-workers.”
Rifkin, 41, was a volunteer chaplain at Memorial. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital at 8 p.m. Friday after a friend called 911.
The friend told a dispatcher that Rifkin said she wanted to buy a gun and kill herself and take her two sons with her. The friend said Rifkin was distraught over losing her job at The Navigators, a Christian ministry, on May 1. Her husband, Don Rifkin, had lost his job more than a year ago and was working in South Carolina.
About 4 p.m. Saturday, Rifkin went to Acme Pawn & Loan, filled out paperwork for an instant background check and bought a .38-caliber revolver, according to Colorado Springs police Sgt. Scott Whittington.
Since she had no criminal record and had not been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, Rifkin was instantly approved for the gun, according to a Colorado Bureau of Investigation official.
A friend talked to Rifkin about midnight Saturday, Whittington said, but when she arrived at 7:40 a.m. Sunday to pick the family up for church, she found that Gabriel Rifkin, 13; Nathan Rifkin, 12; and their mother had been shot in the head.
Hospital officials said Tuesday that privacy laws prevented them from discussing the Rifkin case.
Catherine Victorson, director of medical social work at the hospital, said each case is handled individually. Each month, 400 people visit the emergency room with psychiatric, drug or alcohol problems, or a combination of them, and between 66 percent and 75 percent are not admitted.
Victorson said the hospital follows standard screening protocol that is used in hospitals across the nation.
She said that the screening works but that “human nature is unpredictable.”
“Nothing is perfect. Even though we would like for it to be perfect, it isn’t,” she said.
Victorson said social workers, doctors and nurses screen psychiatric patients in the emergency room, but “we don’t have a blood test” that indicates whether a person meets the statutory threshold to be involuntarily admitted to a hospital.
A hospital can hold people only if they are “imminently a danger to themselves or another or gravely disabled and unable to care for basic safety needs,” Victorson said.
Staff writer Erin Emery can be reached at 719-522-1360 or eemery@denverpost.com.
