Gunman kills himself, mother at Baltimore hospital

A man who became distressed 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 injured 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 expressively distraught and reacted and was overwhelmed by the news of his mother's condition," Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III said. Pardus pull 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, distorted outside the eighth floor room where Pardus' mother, Jean Davis, was being treated. Pardus then holed up in the room in a more than two-hour standoff that led authorities to lock down a small part of the Nelson Building while allowing the rest of the sprawling red-brick medical complex a cluster of hospital, research and education buildings to remain open.

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