BALTIMORE — A man who became distraught as he was being briefed on his mother’s condition by a surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital pulled a gun and shot the doctor Thursday, then killed his mother and himself in her room at the world-famous medical center, police said.
The doctor, who was wounded in the abdomen, was expected to survive.
The gunman, Paul Warren Pardus, 50, had been listening to the surgeon about midday when he “became emotionally distraught and reacted . . . and was overwhelmed by the news of his mother’s condition,” said Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III.
Pardus pulled a semiautomatic gun from his waistband and shot the doctor once, the commissioner said. The doctor, identified by colleagues as orthopedic surgeon David B. Cohen, collapsed outside the eighth-floor room where Pardus’ 84-year-old mother, Jean Davis, was being treated.
Pardus holed up in the room in a more than two-hour standoff that led authorities to lock down a small section of the Nelson Building. The rest of the sprawling red-brick medical complex remained open.
When officers made their way to the room, they found Pardus and his mother shot to death — he on the floor, she in her bed.
“I guess he just couldn’t bear to see her the way she was,” said Pardus’ brother, 59-year-old Alvin Gibson of Remington, Va.
Gibson said their mother suffered from arthritis and rheumatism and had surgery last week, but it didn’t help her.
“I guess because he thought my mom was suffering because the surgery wasn’t successful and she probably wouldn’t be able to walk again,” he said about a possible reason for Pardus’ actions. “She was a dear, sweet lady.”
Harry Koffenberger, vice president of security, said the hospital uses hand-held metal detectors to screen patients and visitors known to be high-risk.
However, with 80 entrances and 80,000 visitors a week, it is not realistic to place metal detectors and guards everywhere, he said. The hospital will review procedures and the use of metal detectors.
Michelle Burrell, who works in a coffee shop in the hospital lobby, said she was told by employees who were on the floor where the doctor was shot that the gunman was angry with the doctor’s treatment of his mother.
“It’s crazy,” she said.
Pardus was from Arlington, Va., and had a handgun permit in that state, police said.
The wounded doctor, an assistant professor at the medical school, underwent surgery.
“The doctor will be OK,” said police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. “He’s in the best place in the world — at Johns Hopkins Hospital.”
With more than 30,000 employees, the Johns Hopkins medical system is Baltimore’s biggest private employer. The hospital has more than 1,000 beds and more than 1,700 full-time doctors.
Hopkins said it informed its employees about the gunman in an e-mail at 11:30 a.m., about a half-hour after the doctor was shot. They were told to remain in their offices or rooms with the doors locked and to stay away from the windows.
At 1:30 p.m., another e-mail went out advising employees that police “are in control of the situation.”
