What Happened At The Mass General Hospital Today?

Two shot and killed at Mass. General Hospital

By Martin Finucane, Associated Press, 4/8/03


BOSTON -- Two people, including a prominent cardiologist, were fatally shot Tuesday at Massachusetts General Hospital, but details remained sketchy hours afterward, police said.

Boston police spokeswoman Mariellen Burns said police were called to the hospital at 10:09 a.m. with a report of shots fired.

Dr. Brian McGovern and an unidentified woman who worked at the hospital were taken to the emergency room, but both were pronounced dead.

Neither police nor hospital officials would comment on a motive for the shooting. Police would not immediately confirm the double shooting was a murder-suicide, but said they were not seeking any suspects.

"We don't believe there was anyone else involved," Burns said.

The shooting took place in a small office in the hospital's Cardiac Arrhythmia Center and Electrophysiology Lab, where McGovern worked, according to Dr. Peter Slavin, president of the hospital. Police said the two were alone in a small office off the lab's main area at the time.

Burns said several shots were fired from a handgun, which police later recovered in the office where the shooting took place.

Police did not immediately release the identity of the woman, saying her family had not yet been notified. Hospital officials also declined to release details about her or her job at the hospital. They would not say if she worked with McGovern.

McGovern, 47, a native of Ireland, was co-director of the hospital's Cardiac Arrhythmia Service. His specialty was treating patients with disturbances of the heart rhythm. He was also an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and lived in Boxford.

He wrote more than 100 articles published in professional journals, many focusing on arrhythmia management. He was also chairman of the Atrial Fibrillation Foundation, created by patients and physicians interested in the disease to encourage research.

"He was an outgoing and friendly person. He had a nice Irish brogue and a twinkle in his eye," said David Torchiana, chief executive and chairman of the Massachusetts General Physicians Organization.

McGovern leaves his wife, Anne Jennings, a physician in Beverly and two young daughters.

"Not only is this a very difficult episode, a tragic episode for them ... it's a very difficult episode for the entire MGH community," Slavin said.

Slavin said McGovern was a "very well-respected, well-regarded" physician at MGH, where he had worked for more than 20 years.

McGovern graduated from medical school at University College Dublin in Ireland in 1979. He began postgraduate training at MGH in 1981.

According to the state Board of Registration in Medicine, McGovern had not made a payment on any malpractice claim in the past 10 years, and did not have a criminal record or record of hospital discipline during that time.

"He was a wonderfully caring physician, and whenever I referred a patient to him, the patient would always call me and thank me afterwards," said Dr. Charles A. Welch, president of the Massachusetts Medical Society and a psychiatrist at MGH. "He was superbly skilled at what he did, but he was also just a wonderful person."

People streamed through the corridors of the renowned hospital Monday morning, apparently unaware that the shooting had taken place. Hospital workers and visitors lined up for coffee at a stand just 20 feet from the office where the shooting took place. Hospital security guards and police guarded the office entrances.

Peter O'Sullivan, 83, of Lawrence, said he had an appointment scheduled with the office at 11 a.m., but all appointments had been canceled due to an unspecified "emergency."

Burns said police were waiting for autopsy results and interviewing people who worked in the office as well as people who knew the two. Slavin said counseling and other services were being provided to all employees affected by the shooting.

http://www.boston.com/news/daily/08/hospital_shooting.htm


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