Originally published August 9 2014
Psychiatrist with a pistol ends patient's hospital shooting spree - man with gun saves lives
by PF Louis
(NaturalNews) This summer at a hospital in the Philadelphia area, a psychiatric patient drew a handgun and shot his caseworker in the face, killing her. Psychiatrist Lee Silverman ducked behind his desk, grabbed his pistol and emptied the chamber at patient Richard Plotts, striking him several times.
Two other staffers, another psychiatrist and a case worker, at the Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital in the suburban Philadelphia township of Darby jumped the wounded 49-year-old Plotts and disarmed him.
He was seriously wounded, while Silverman suffered a grazed head wound and the case worker, 53-year-old Theresa Hunt of Philadelphia, died from a shot to the face that exited through the back of her head.
Law enforcement officials reported that Plotts had a history of violent episodes. His ex-wife, who had divorced him in 1999, said he had often threatened to kill her.
Plotts was also frequently detained for short terms as a psychiatric patient. One of those short-term psychiatric confinements was for an attempt at taking his own life. He reportedly had also served six years for an attempted armed robbery from a bank in Delaware County, where Darby is located.
Plotts' wounds were treated in surgery, and he was scheduled to be arraigned at the hospital for the murder of Theresa Hunt and the attempted murder of Dr. Lee Silverman.
Questioning this incident without answers
So here's a guy with a history of threatening others, of using a gun in a bank robbery, of abusing his wife mentally and physically before their divorce, and attempting suicide.
And Plotts has been under psychiatric care for a few years. Well, what kind of care is done without extensive talk therapy or prolonged confinement or detainment? Psychiatric drug prescription care.
As usual, none of the local of national press coverages even implied that drugs with dangerous side effects were prescribed. But there have been several reports of suicidal and homicidal ideation as side effects from these psychiatric drugs.
Even worse, many of these are suddenly acted out. Many spree killers were either on or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs.
Instead of questioning the psychiatric drugs that he could have been prescribed, the mainstream media mentions that the poor sap was under psychiatric care, implying that he or she was just a nutcase to begin with, a loose canon that couldn't be restrained no matter what.
So what motivated Dr. Silverman to have a pistol in his office desk in a hospital that forbids firearms for everyone but on-duty security patrol officers?
Was he concerned about another appointment with a patient with a known violent history? Or was he aware of a rash of hospital shootings over the last year in Reno, Nevada, and the prestigious John's Hopkins Medical Center of Baltimore, Maryland, or a hospital shooting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania?
Dr. Silverman was not charged with illegal possession of a firearm, because he had not broken the local laws for having a gun in your office desk. And after all, he saved the day by exchanging gunfire with the attacker.
Police asserted that Dr. Silverman did prevent others from being shot. Plotts had 39 bullets on him after shooting what he had in his gun. And Silverman mimicked standard police procedure of emptying a gun in the direction of a lone attacker in order to stop him. All by the book.
But did Dr. Silverman have another book to let him know that he might be in danger from Plotts? That book would include the psychiatric drugs Plotts was likely on, perhaps some even from Silverman's own pen, and their black box side effects. In other words, this may have been one of those "chickens coming home to roost" consequences from reckless or negative actions.
In this case, it could be what happened as a result of someone living on the edge being prescribed dangerous psychiatric drugs. Hospitals are even more dangerous than usual with all these shootings. Maybe staffers should be armed.
Sources for this article include:
http://abcnews.go.com
http://www.utahpeoplespost.com
http://www.lehighvalleylive.com
http://www.cchrint.org
http://science.naturalnews.com
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