Cops: Johns Hopkins Gunman Kills Self, Relative
- (AP Photo/Alex Dominguez)
A gunman who wounded a doctor at Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore and then holed up inside a room has shot and killed himself and a relative during a standoff with authorities, police said Thursday.
Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told The Associated Press that the suspect and his relative died in a hospital room.
The standoff lasted more than 2 hours.
Guglielmi said earlier that he did not know the relationship between the gunman - described as a man in his 30s - and the doctor. The hospital said in a statement that the doctor is a faculty physician but that it could not release more information because of privacy policies.
The doctor was shot in the stomach but was expected to survive, Guglielmi said.
"The doctor will be OK," Guglielmi said. "He's in the best place in the world - at Johns Hopkins hospital."
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.
"Basically, he was upset about his mother being paralyzed by the doctor," Burrell said. "It's crazy."
Ashley Davis told the Baltimore Sun that she saw the wounded doctor come into the emergency room. She said he was conscious and she didn't see any blood.
"By the time I saw him, he was on a stretcher and people were all around him," Davis told the Sun.
A small area of the hospital had been locked down before the gunman died, as about a dozen officers wearing vests and helmets and carrying assault weapons prepared to go into the hospital at midday. Guglielmi said the gunman had not taken any hostages, and people with appointments in other parts of the hospital were encouraged to keep them.
The FBI was assisting Baltimore police, said FBI spokesman Richard J. Wolf.
Hopkins spokesman Gary Stephenson said the gunman was on the eighth floor of the Nelson building, the main hospital tower. Guglielmi said the situation was contained to that part of the hospital, and no people had been locked in rooms or otherwise in danger.
According to the Hopkins website, the eighth floor is home to orthopedic, spine, trauma and thoracic services.
The rest of the massive hospital, research and medical education complex remained open, including the emergency department.
With more than 30,000 employees, Johns Hopkins Medicine is among Maryland's largest private employers and the largest in Baltimore. The hospital has more than 1,000 beds and more than 1,700 full-time doctors.
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