Police Say Son Was Upset Over His Mother's Care

Paul Warren Pardus spent restless nights with his ailing mother at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and when he believed doctors had failed her, the 50-year-old shot her physician before killing his mother and himself.

Pardus was a fixture in the room since last week, after his 84-year-old mother, Jean Davis, was brought there for surgery related to cancer treatment. While speaking to Dr. David B. Cohen around 11 a.m., Pardus pulled a semiautomatic handgun from his waistband, shot Cohen in the abdomen and ran into her hospital room.

Cohen was rushed into surgery but is expected to recover. For three hours after the shooting, police treated the situation as a standoff, in which some parts of the sprawling East Baltimore campus were locked down and others were evacuated. Snipers took to the roofs, as people in surrounding buildings were ordered to stay away from windows and to draw the blinds. Images from the scene were relayed live over international television.

In the end, investigators believe Pardus and Davis were dead the whole time. After sending in a robot with a camera, they discovered the bodies — the bedridden Davis with a gunshot wound to the back of the head, Pardus on the floor, shot through the mouth.

Several Hopkins personnel, some who worked on the eighth floor of the Nelson building, said that Pardus blamed Cohen for paralyzing his mother during surgery. According to one witness who spoke with detectives, he yelled, "You ruined my mother."

"He thought it was [the doctor's] fault, but it wasn't," said a nurse, who did not want to give his name because staff members at the hospital were discouraged from discussing the incident with news media.

Pardus was a single man whose mother had moved into his tiny home in Arlington, Va., about three miles west of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Neighbors said he was a driver for a service for disabled people, but his first obligation was to his beloved mother.

"He was a very kind-hearted man, as far as we could see," said neighbor Teresa Green, 44. "The love he had for his mother showed."

Records show he had a permit to carry a concealed weapon in Virginia, and he did not appear to have a criminal record beyond traffic violations. In 1998, he filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, and a website lists him as the holder of a copyright for a screenplay and lyrics to a song called "I Love the Lord." Pardus had identified himself to hospital staff as Warren Davis, his middle name and mother's last name.

Vanessa Allen, who lived across the street from Pardus, said she didn't know him well but also saw him often with his mother.

"I always admired him, how he took care of her. That's why I was so shocked when I found out it was him," Allen said. "I can't believe he would shoot his own mother."

Thursday's shooting brought activity at some parts of the busy Hopkins hospital to a standstill. By midafternoon, floors of the Nelson building had been evacuated and the police perimeter around the hospital had extended several blocks. Police were shuffling groups of people away — some police officers even pushed patients in wheelchairs away from the scene themselves — and employees were visibly shaken and calling family members as they hurried away from the hospital.

Michelle Burrell, who works at a coffee bar in the hospital lobby, said she sent text message to a friend in a room on the eighth floor of the Nelson building shortly after the shooting. She and others had locked themselves in.

"She just let me know she was safe, and that's all I was worried about," Burrell said. She said the scene in the lobby of the hospital was chaotic, with people running for cover, locking themselves in rooms.

Jacqueline Billy, a nurse who works in respiratory care, was on the seventh floor and got in an elevator that took her up to the eighth. She was greeted by police, guns drawn, who ordered her to shut the door.

"I was petrified — the door opened and there are a bunch of guns. You never expect that," she said.

Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III said that tactical teams, which included the Baltimore city police and SWAT teams, the FBI, and Baltimore County SWAT teams, were called in, and had set up a command center within 45 minutes after the incident.

"By all evaluations, everything worked as designed," Bealefeld said.

In the School of Nursing across the street, students sat in a computer room and study lounge, speaking in hushed tones about the scene unfolding across the street.

A group of students, peering through the blinds, noted that large X's had been placed in several windows, presumably to note rooms that were clear. One girl read aloud a text message that said the doctor had died, information that would prove to be incorrect.

Amy Wilson, wearing purple hospital scrubs, sat on the floor of the nursing school's main lobby, beneath a flat screen TV notifying students of a "shooting incident" and instructing them to stay tuned for updates. A member of the support staff in the intensive-care unit, Wilson said staff members often have to call security or police when fights break out among family or others visiting the hospital, but she had never heard of such an attack on a medical professional.

"It's a scary reality" of working at a big institution, said Ashley Salamone, also a nurse in the intensive-care unit.

Cohen was continuing to receive treatment Thursday night. Those who work with him said he was a well-liked and respected orthopedic surgeon who has worked at the hospital for more than a dozen years and was known for performing magic tricks. They said he is a Hunt Valley resident and a father of two whose wife is a nurse at Hopkins.

Ashley Davis, an emergency room employee, said that she saw Cohen as he was rushed off to surgery. "By the time I saw him, he was on a stretcher and people were all around him," Davis said, adding that she didn't see any blood and that Cohen appeared to be conscious. When asked to describe the scene in the emergency room, she just said, "It was frightening."

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake commended the rapid response of law enforcement officials, saying that she was "very troubled by the incident" but that "the safety and security of Johns Hopkins employees was paramount throughout this whole incident."

"Hopkins is the best medical institution in the world, and this incident, as tragic as it is, is not going to change that," Rawlings-Blake said.

Although Hopkins has long made safety a priority at its medical campus in East Baltimore, located in one of the city's most dangerous areas, the hospital does not require patients or visitors to pass through metal detectors. An exception is the Emergency Department, where guards conduct searches and wave a metal-detecting wand over visitors.

Metal detectors are rare in American hospitals, and security experts say they are generally not feasible or desirable.

"We're trying to strike a balance to make our institutions warm, open and inviting, and at the same time protecting everybody who comes through," said Joseph Bellino, president of the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety, a professional organization based in Illinois.

"Most of the time we do a very, very good job," he said. "Every now and then we get these events that are anomalies."

Police are not sure when Pardus shot himself and his mother. Anthony Guglielmi, the department's chief spokesman, said there were no witnesses who heard the gunshots. After he was shot, Cohen collapsed outside the doorway, and the shooter barricaded himself and his mother in the room.

"He was last seen running into the room, brandishing the handgun in the direction of his mother, who was confined to the bed," said Bealefeld.

He said police had not communicated with Pardus at any point, and investigators believe the shooting was swift. About 2 p.m., the robot camera showed the bodies, at which point police communicated, "Subject shot." That led a spokesman to initially tell reporters that police had shot Pardus, which was later corrected.

It was not clear just how grim the news delivered by Cohen was, but Pardus apparently decided a quick death was the only resolution. Investigators believe he shot his mother in the back of the head so she would not see it coming — one officer suggested that it was a "mercy killing."

"It was sad," said one official who viewed the scene.
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Gunman At Johns Hopkins Hospital Has Been Shot And Killed

BALTIMORE - A gunman who wounded a doctor at Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore and then barricaded himself inside a room has been shot and killed, Baltimore police say.

Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi says the man was shot and killed by officers Thursday afternoon.

The doctor, who was shot in the stomach, was rushed to surgery and is expected to survive.

"The doctor will be OK," Guglielmi said. "He's in the best place in the world - at Johns Hopkins hospital."

Guglielmi does 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 it could not release more information because of privacy policies.

A small area of the hospital remains locked down and police are executing a tactical operation to capture the suspect.

Hopkins spokesman Gary Stephenson said the affected area was the eighth floor of the Nelson building, which is the main hospital tower.

According to the Hopkins website, the eighth floor is home to orthopedic, spine, trauma and thoracic services.

About a dozen officers wearing vests and helmets and carrying assault weapons prepared to enter the hospital at midday. The FBI is also helping Baltimore police, FBI spokesman Richard J. Wolf says.

The rest of the massive hospital, research and medical education complex in remains open, including the emergency department, and patients can report for treatment and appointments.

People with appointments in other parts of the hospital are encouraged to keep them.

Earlier, a hospital spokesman said the gunman had been caught. Police later said that was not the case.

A number of roads near the hospital have been shut down, including roads near Broadway, East Monument and North Wolfe streets, the Baltimore Sun reports.

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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Johns Hopkins Researcher Buried In Florida

North Palm Beach, Fla. —

The wooden pews were filled Friday morning as friends and family remembered slain Hopkins researcher Stephen Pitcairn as a young man with an "intense" and "inquisitive" nature.

"He grabbed you and you just wanted to be where he was," said Chris "Suds" Southard, youth director at First Presbyterian Church in North Palm Beach, Fla., where the funeral was held.

Standing behind the pulpit, Rev. Ronald Hilliard tried to comfort the grief-stricken, still reeling from the death of the Jupiter, Fla., native who was robbed at knifepoint Sunday night while walking to his Charles Village apartment.

In North Palm Beach, the reverend urged that the family not to lose sight of the vibrant life Pitcairn was able to lead.

"The value of life is not in longevity … the value of life is based on the quality of the chapters that God has written," he said.

The funeral brought together those who knew Pitcairn throughout his life, cut short just two days before his 24th birthday: graduates from The Benjamin School, which Pitcairn attended for 14 years; classmates from Kalamazoo College in Michigan; and colleagues from Johns Hopkins medical center in Baltimore.

"We are just devastated as a school community," said Robert Goldberg, head of school at The Benjamin School. "Our heart is just so heavy for the Pitcairn family."

Pitcairn, a researcher at a cell engineering laboratory on the Johns Hopkins medical campus, was on the phone with his mother, Gwen Pitcairn, around 11 p.m. Sunday when he was confronted by a man and a woman in the 2600 block of St. Paul St., police say. His mother listened as he pleaded with the robbers and was stabbed in the chest.

Authorities have charged John Alexander Wagner, 34, and Lavelva Merritt, 24, who police say were "hunting to rob someone," with first-degree murder in his death.

During the 90-minute service, Hilliard urged the family not to focus on the tragic circumstances surrounding Pitcairn's death. He suggested that the family may be wondering what would have happened if circumstances had been different.

"We may be sad about the book ending before we were ready," said Hilliard, but that sadness should not overshadow the value and impact that Pitcairn's life had.

"The reality is that in God's eyes, Stephen's life was complete," he said.

Speakers largely avoided discussing the tragic circumstances surrounding Pitcairn's death, instead paying tribute to his Christian faith.

Emily and Elise Pitcairn remembered their brother as intelligent and tenacious. Nancy Reugg, Pitcairn's former fourth-grade teacher, said that many details about the young man had faded from her memory over the years, but his curiosity remained in sharp focus.

The service, held inside First Presbyterian's flower-filled sanctuary, featured a number of quotations from Psalms. Those in attendance sang "Amazing Grace" and watched slides of pictures of Pitcairn, accompanied by music played by his former guitar teacher.

Some of the photographs of Pitcairn as a small child elicited sniffles, tears and even momentary laughter. One photograph featured a young Pitcairn wearing oversized sunglasses, and, momentarily, people laughed.

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This murder didn't have to happen if the court system cared about who they released back into society.

Another Promising Life Cut Short- This Never Should Have Happened!

The promising young researcher had come to Baltimore from his home in Florida, after attending college in Michigan and working with stem cells in Japan, where he became fluent in the language. Here, he assisted with breast cancer studies at the Johns Hopkins University and was poised to enroll in medical school.

(street where the stabbing took place)

He was four blocks from his Charles Village apartment Sunday night when two robbers took his life for cash and a cell phone.
Dropped off at Penn Station after a weekend trip to New York to visit his sister, 23-year-old Stephen Pitcairn was talking to his mother on his iPhone at about 11 p.m. and walking north in the 2600 block of St. Paul St. when a man and woman demanded money.

Police say he turned over his wallet, then took a knife to the chest.

A resident was in his home ironing when he saw three people who appeared to be fighting, then heard a scream. He ran outside, saw Pitcairn lying on his stomach in the gutter and called 911.

"I made it back and held his hand, and I told him that everything was going to be OK," said the man, who was shaken and did not want to give his name. "He said, 'Help me,' and then I held his hand until he expired. I didn't want him to be alone.

"Nobody wants to die alone."

Police said Pitcairn was officially pronounced dead at Maryland Shock Trauma center after midnight. He would have turned 24 Tuesday.

Anthony Guglielmi, the Police Department's chief spokesman, said Pitcairn's mother heard the robbery over the phone.

Police arrested and charged two people in connection with the crime, each one with a predictable rap sheet. Lavelva Merritt, 24, has a long history of drug-related arrests and convictions. John Alexander Wagner, 34, has been charged in robberies and assaults, never receiving anything more than what amounted to time served, even after violating his probation repeatedly, court records show.

Wagner's most recent arrest occurred in late April, when police used surveillance cameras to locate Wagner and a man who said Wagner had put him in a headlock and taken his belongings. The victim pointed out Wagner, who he said had first asked him if he was "BGF" — a member of the Black Guerilla Family gang — or "J," a reference to Jamaa, a Swahili word meaning "family" that is used by BGF members.

Prosecutors dropped the charge on May 18. On a form documenting the decision to place the case on the "inactive docket," prosecutors checked boxes indicating the victim did not appear and "gave statements inconsistent with evidence or otherwise lacks credibility"

Pitcairn's death was one of five killings over the weekend as city officials say crime is on the decline. An unidentified man was fatally shot in the head earlier Sunday while sitting in a vehicle in East Baltimore; two other men were killed a day earlier on the east side in unrelated incidents.
Those killings occurred in traditionally more dangerous enclaves of the city's east side, where gunshots are more frequent and memorials mark light posts. Pitcairn's death came in a neighborhood generally regarded as safe, though that distinction can seem fleeting: The Charles Village Benefits District, which encompasses four neighborhoods where residents pay for extra services, has seen six homicides so far this year, including the shooting of a reputed gang member from nearby Barclay.

Pitcairn, of Jupiter, Fla., studied economics at Kalamazoo College in Michigan. After graduating in 2009, he pursued an interest in medicine and research to land a job at Hopkins that summer, in part due to a personal recommendation from former university President William Richardson, a faculty member at Kalamazoo.

"At that point, I knew he was a pretty special person," said Dr. Gregg Semenza, of the Institute for Genetic Medicine.

Semenza hired Pitcairn for a junior position, but was quickly impressed with his thirst for knowledge and soft-spoken confidence. He had spent a year in Japan doing stem-cell research, soaking up the culture. When Japanese visitors came to the lab in April, Pitcairn conversed with them in their language and talked about restaurants.

On July 1, Semenza promoted him to a lab manager position, which he said was essentially his "right-hand man," and recommended him for enrollment in Hopkins' School of Medicine.

"This was a guy who just had a whole future in front of him," Semenza said. "You knew he was going to do great things."

Daniele Gilke, who worked with Pitcairn and counted him as a friend, said he had been in New York visiting his sister, something he did often. She said he had applied to several medical schools, shadowed a prominent Hopkins transplant surgeon and taught MCAT classes twice a week.

"Stephen always struck me as a person who didn't believe in obstacles," she wrote in an e-mail.

Dr. Edward D. Miller, dean and chief executive officer of Johns Hopkins Medicine, called Pitcairn's death a "tragedy for his family, his friends, for our institution and for science" and expressed hope for a rapid arrest and conviction.

"This is a terrible, terrible loss," Miller said in a statement.

There have been several high-profile incidents involving Hopkins students, including a break-in at a student's off-campus house last fall in which an intruder was killed with a samurai sword. Fraternity member Christopher B. Elser was killed in 2004 after a struggle with a knife-wielding burglar. The next year, a man fatally beat student Linda Trinh. The two student deaths prompted the university to beef up security on and off campus.

"The loss of any member of our Johns Hopkins community impacts us all," Ronald J. Daniels, president of the university, said in a statement. "But the loss of a vital young man of such potential, intent on dedicating his life to helping others, is especially tragic. Everyone at the university joins me in expressing our sympathies to Stephen's family, colleagues and friends."

Pitcairn's relatives in Florida declined to comment.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/

Sympathy is not enough. The word tragic does not quite explain it! Sorry won't bring this young man back. And the horrible part about all of this is that in a few days, a few weeks, his name will be almost forgotten and he will only be a statistic in the city's crime report. This young man, along with the others that have lost their lives to thugs like these will no longer have a face..........except with the family, friends and colleagues who will always love him and will miss him forever.

This type of crime should NEVER be allowed to happen in ANY city in America and it's a darn shame when walking down an American street can get you killed! Two worthless thugs are still alive today, sitting in a jail cell that probably feels more like home to them than home itself. They've done this before and if tried and let free again they will repeat.

Stephen Pitcairn, his family, and all other families that have faced losing a loved one at the hands of a killer have no more time. They were cheated by the judicial system and those that operate it.

I can't imagine listening to my childs voice from my cell phone as they are murdered........stabbed repeatedly to death and I can't help my child.

Hopkins Leads List of American Hospitals

The widely regarded U.S. News and World Report is out with its annual hospital rankings and several Maryland hospitals, led by Johns Hopkins Hospital, made the list.

Hopkins placed first in five specialties (Ear, Nose and Throat; Gynecology, Neurology and Neurosurgery, Urology and Rheumatology) and ranked in 11 more categories (Cancer, Diabetes & Endocrinology, Gastroenterology, Geriatrics, Heart & Heart Surgery, Kidney Disorders, Ophthalmology, Orthopedics, Psychiatry, Pulmonology and Rehabilitation).

That gave the hospital top ranking for the 20th year in a row.

The University of Maryland Medical Center ranked in nine categories (Cancer, Diabetes & Endocrinology, Ear, Nose & Throat, Geriatrics, Heart & Heart Surgery, Kidney Disorders, Orthopedics, Pulmonology and Urology).

Ranking in three were Good Samaritan Hospital (Gastroenterology, Geriatrics and Orthopedics) and Union Memorial Hospital (Orthopedics, Heart & Heart Surgery and Neurology & Neurosurgery).

And ranking in one were Franklin Square Hospital Center (Gastroenterology), Johns Hopkins Bayview (Geriatrics), Mercy Medical Center (Neurology & Neurosurgery) and Sheppard Pratt Hospital (Psychiatry).

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