A patient being seen at the Massachusetts General Hospital’s Bipolar Clinic and Research Program attacked his physician today, stabbing her with a knife during a treatment session according to Boston Police. The incident occurred in an office building nearby the main Mass. General building, where …
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“The off-duty security officer did not work at the hospital, but thankfully just happened to be in the hallway at the same time the incident occurred.”
Do you think the dead patient is thankful?
I really want to hear more about this. I wonder why the security guard didn’t shoot to disarm and not to kill. I have so many questions about this. I hope the security guard wasn’t trigger happy.
David – I think the physician and the others who were working in that office building are thankful they are alive because of the quick reaction of the security guard.
Law enforcement is generally taught only to shoot as a last resort, and then to shoot at the center mass of a person. Unlike in Hollywood where people can disarm a person with a well-aimed shot, real life usually happens a lot more quickly and a lot more messily…
Ideal outcome? Of course not, and far from it… it would’ve been far better had someone not died in this incident. It is a tragic story and one that highlights the seeming randomness of violence.
Working with potentially hostile or psychotic patients always begs the question of how an interview should be conducted. Should physicians remain standing during the interview, should they stay closer to the exit with the door open? Was the patient angry with the physician or feeling threatened? It would be interesting to know more of the details of this situation to determine if the incident might have been avoided.
Basically it is simple. A knife is a deadly weapon. They do often kill people especially when wielded by a human (knives are generally known to be very calm when left alone in a drawer).
I am bipolar and agree with the guards actions. Dude with a knife=bad, constituting s deadly threat. It just takes one stab with a knife and you can die. So if one has a gun (legally owned registered etc.) you shoot to stop the threat ASAP -simple he dies or you die (this person with the knife has proven that he is willing to stab people and is therefore a deadly, proven threat.
Yes, David, it’s true what John says. Police men are taught only how to shoot someone dead.
A few houses down, there lives a family in a nice large house with four sons, ranging in the age from 13-22?
Well, the 19 year old had a psychotic breakdown, his first, bipolar for two years, no history of violence.
The parents were so scared they called the police after locking themselves and the family into the master bedroom. (The boy had an adverse reaction to having been overmedicated by his psychiatrist) The police knew he was mentally ill before they arrived.
When the four cops arrived, the boy was standing in the lid driveway holding a knife.
The police called from a safe distance for him to drop the knife and he wouldn’t. They then shot him with a round of beanbags which didn’t stir the boy in the least. Then a cop again called to the boy to drop the knife and the kid called back for them to just kill him. (He never threatened anyone)
The cop furthest back, and I mean at no time was there ever anyone even close to the boy holding the knife, well, he shot him, not only once, not only twice, but four times, and more than dead.
It was horrible and the police did not get into trouble.
I can understand how things might play out quickly, and certainly not ideally, in a life-threatening panic situation like this.
But I still feel upset at the patient’s death – despite his extreme violence, I don’t imagine he deserved a sentence to death. The use of a taser gun to inhibit any further violence, prison, and a chance at rehabilitation would have seemed more appropriate.
I’m upset by the patient’s death as well and wish events didn’t occur so quickly that the off-duty guard felt as if he had to shoot the patient. It’s not clear the guard had any other weapon other than his gun.
More details have emerged about the identities of the people involved:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/10/28/doctor_stabbed_attacker_killed_at_massachusetts_general_hospital/
If I were that psychiatrist, I would have wanted someone to save my life too. However, I can’t help marveling at how violence runs through our society so deeply that the only reactions by the media and the “regular people” they’ve interviewed are expressions of admiration for the “hero” who shot the attacker in the head. No, I wasn’t there, but I have to question whether he could have left him without an arm by shooting him in the hand instead of killing him by shooting him in the head. It’s always easier to just go for deadly force instead of trying a more dangerous and non-lethal way. We are a society of hypocrites, with most of us declaring our admiration to Gandhi and our devotion to Jesus Christ, but worshiping all sorts of aggression in our daily lives.
It is a tragedy that this happened, and I’d have questions about the security practices of the facility involved. With that said, I would bet that the off-duty security guard would rather not have had to shoot anyone – he will carry that with him for the rest of his life, and if he’s a normal human being, he will be second-guessing himself and seeing the incident over and over in his dreams. Of the people in our society who are armed for any legitimate, i.e. non-criminal, reason, most are not psychopaths.
I agree with the comments about how desensitized our culture is to violence. I also understand the questions by people about why the off-duty security guard didn’t shoot the man with the knife in the arm or otherwise avoid killing him, but the questions reveal a lack of knowledge about the difficulty of doing something like that. I am a psychotherapist and also a retired Marine and former firearms instructor, and an expert pistol shooter, but if I found myself in that situation, the only way I could expect to shoot someone in the arm, leg, etc., would be if they were cooperative and held still while I aimed at them. The fact that he hit the man in the head was probably a fluke – unless the man with the knife was holding still, the security guard was probably only able to aim at his body as best he could.
In confrontations in both military and law enforcement settings involving handguns, even trained people miss a large percentage of the time at ranges of less than ten feet. People move very fast and erratically, and a person with a knife can reach a person with a gun and stab them fatally a majority of the time if they start from within twenty feet. If they were closer than that, the security guard actually seriously risked his own life by calling on the man with the knife to drop it before shooting him when he refused.
There is a strain of cognitive distortion in human thinking that tends to think that if something bad happened, there must be a bad guy – either a bad person, or in earlier times a vindictive spirit or deity. The fact is that sometimes tragic things happen when no one would have wanted them to take place. I’m sure the people running the treatment facility are wishing they’d had security measures in place to avoid having the doctor exposed to that risk, and that the doctor is wondering whether she said or did something avoidable that set the man off, and as I said that the off-duty security guard is wishing he hadn’t had to shoot anyone. But things like this happen, and all we can do afterward is try to improve our ways of doing things to eliminate or reduce the risk of their recurring.
Very sad for all involved.
Yes its bad it ended up in a man loosing his life. But that bipolar man was willing and ready to take lifes. Those of you who have said he should of used a non lethal weapon, most off duty security and police DO NOT carry non lethal weapons. A lot of police officers are issued a concealed weapon to carry around when off duty. Those who are judging because of a shot in the head you were not there. You do not know what happened. The bipolar guy could of rushed and the security guard just reacted on reflex. You do not know what its like to go through something like that. You dont have time to think “Im just going to shoot him in the arm to disable him”. Its kill or be killed. Its a lot easier to shoot a large area like the chest or head than to shoot an arm. Also that bipolar guy was probably going to kill himself eventually so it wouldnt of mattered.
The media are just vultures.Why are they not asking how this happened? What triggered the attack? Why didnt the DR. see signs of a problem? Why doesn’t the facility have a plan in place for a bad situation? What was a off duty security gaurd doing with a gun in the facility? Who is this security gaurd? What is his background? What kind of training does he have? Was he a patient of DR Desrosiers? A man who was ill and trying to get treatment lost his life, Why couldnt this have been prevented ?
whats with you sad saps? He was killing a doctor. You would rather the patient brutally murder someone than the guard put him down? And before you get your feelings hurt and call me incompassionate think about how many people the doctor will be able to help since she lived through the attack.