Posted on 07/24/2014 6:59:15 PM PDT by BulletBobCo
DARBY, Pa. (TheBlaze/AP) — A psychiatrist who was grazed by gunfire from a patient at a suburban Philadelphia hospital Thursday helped stop the gunman by apparently using his own weapon to shoot and wound him, but not before a caseworker was killed, authorities said.
A patient opened fire after entering the doctor’s office at Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital with the caseworker, District Attorney Jack Whelan said. Witnesses reported hearing yelling before the gunshots.
A spokeswoman for Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital said the facility has a policy prohibiting anyone except on-duty law enforcement officers from carrying a weapon anywhere on its campus. It appears at the moment that the unnamed doctor decided to defy that policy in order to defend himself.
But Yeadon Police Chief Donald Molineux said that “without a doubt, I believe the doctor saved lives.”
“Without that firearm, this guy (the patient) could have went out in the hallway and just walked down the offices until he ran out of ammunition,” the chief said.
It wasn’t clear if the incident has the hospital reconsidering its policy against trained staff carrying concealed firearms.
Several hours after the shooting, investigators had only limited information about what happened inside the closed office but believe the psychiatrist, “from all accounts, would have acted in self-defense,” Whelan said.
The doctor, who suffered a wound to his head, “faced a situation where his life was in jeopardy,” Whelan said. He was expected to be interviewed by detectives late Thursday.
The problem was less the bender itself than the chaos it caused in their brain chemistry.
As an analogy, a painter has been carefully painting a detailed picture for some months, then he gets drunk and makes the painting all sloppy. When he sobers up, he may decide not to get drunk again and spiritually recover, but his painting is still fouled up and will take a long time, if ever, to fix.
His AA friends can help him with his spiritual recovery, but there is not much they can do about his painting, no matter how experienced they are.
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