Gunman kills himself, mother at Baltimore hospital

Published 12:00 am Friday, September 17, 2010

BALTIMORE (AP) — 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, 50-year-old Paul Warren Pardus, had been listening to the surgeon around midday when he “became emotionally distraught and reacted … and was overwhelmed by the news of his mother’s condition,” Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III said.

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’ mother, Jean Davis, was being treated.