Distraught son shoots doctor, kills mother, self

BALTIMORE – Paul Warren Pardus spent restless nights with his ailing mother at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and when he believed doctors had failed her, he decided he would determine her fate.

The 50-year-old, distraught over his mother’s medical condition, shot her physician on a top floor Thursday morning at Johns Hopkins Hospital before turning the gun on his mother and himself. The doctor survived; the man and his mother did not.

Pardus had spent much of his time at the hospital since last week, where his 84-year-old mother, Jean Davis, had undergone surgery related to cancer treatment. When Dr. David B. Cohen delivered bad news, Pardus pulled a semi-automatic handgun from his waistband, shot Cohen in the abdomen and ran into her hospital room.

A four-hour standoff ensued, 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 away from windows and to draw the blinds.

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 Pardus blamed Cohen for paralyzing his mother during surgery. According to one witness he yelled, “You ruined my mother.”

Little was known about Pardus, a resident of Arlington, Va. He had identified himself to hospital staff as Warren Davis, his middle name and mother’s last name. 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.

By midafternoon, floors of the Nelson building had been evacuated and the police perimeter around the hospital had extended. Police were shuffling groups of people away – some police officers even pushing patients in wheelchairs away from the scene themselves – and employees were visibly shaken and calling family members as they hurried away from the scene.

Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld said that tactical teams had set up a command center within 45 minutes after the incident.

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.

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 him and his mother in the room.

It was not clear just how grim the news delivered by Cohen to Pardus was, but investigators believe Pardus shot his mother in the back of the head so she would not see it coming – a “mercy killing,” as one veteran officer described it.