Police Seize Navy Doctor After Shootings

An armed and despondent Navy doctor shot and wounded a San Diego police officer early Friday morning, officials said, as she was being apprehended by a SWAT team that burst into her apartment 10 hours after she had wounded a Navy psychiatrist.

Lt. Cmdr. Ann Dalrymple, 37, was being held under observation at the Navy Hospital in Balboa Park on Friday as FBI agents prepared reports for the U.S. attorney’s office. Yet to be decided was whether she should be charged with any federal criminal violations in the overnight standoff or face Navy charges in a military court.

Wounded in the 2:15 a.m. apprehension was Officer Edward M. Verduzco. Officials said Verduzco, 31, was shot in the left knee as the SWAT group attempted to pull Dalrymple from the bathroom of her second-floor apartment in the bachelor officers’ quarters near the commissary at the 32nd Street Naval Station. He was listed in good condition Friday at Mercy Hospital.

The San Diego police Special Weapons and Tactics team had been invited by the Navy to assist in the barricade situation. The police and the Navy earlier this year had undergone joint exercises on handling such crises, according to Cmdr. Mark Baker, a Navy spokesman.

The SWAT team, called to the scene after Dalrymple stopped responding to the pleas of Navy negotiators, fired several rounds of tear gas before bursting into the apartment. She had turned the fan on to blow out the tear gas fumes and had locked herself in the bathroom. As SWAT team members broke through the bathroom door, Verduzco was shot, according to officials.

Officials said the standoff began Thursday afternoon when Dalrymple, upset with losing her hospital residency and worried about problems with her administrative job at the station’s medical clinic, was to have been escorted to the Navy Hospital for evaluation.

Navy psychiatrist James T. Fowler III was shot in the index finger of his left hand when he and two other officers, using a pass key, attempted to enter her apartment.

Navy officials, including those at the scene and others contacted Friday afternoon, indicated that Dalrymple was despondent since being “de-credentialed” from her neurosurgery residency at UC San Diego Medical Center.

Mistreatment Claimed

Relatives in Pensacola, Fla., said in telephone interviews that Dalrymple had been mistreated for several years by the Navy, threatened with unfounded charges of insubordination, and frightened by warnings that she would be confined to a Navy brig because of alleged attitude problems.

“She’s been fighting them all these years,” said her sister, Jeanie Regimbal. “They felt she was not a good doctor.”

Dalrymple’s brother-in-law, Ray Regimbal, added: “As best we can determine, there’s been a very underhanded effort on the behalf of someone out there to get rid of her. Obviously, her career now in the Navy and as a neurosurgeon is ruined.”

Baker, the base spokesman, declined to discuss in detail the circumstances leading up to the confrontation and shootings.

“We’re not going to go beyond the facts on this, unless or until formal charges are filed,” he said. “We need to make that determination. Then we can go into more detail.”

Jim Bolenbach, special agent with the FBI, said he expects the U.S. attorney’s office to make a decision on the case by Monday.

“They want to know exactly what happened,” he said. “We’re completing our reports and then we’ll turn it over to them.”

Lost Residency 18 Months Ago

Navy officials said Dalrymple, the daughter of a Pensacola doctor, was terminated from the UC San Diego neurosurgery residency program about 18 months ago, but they declined to say why. Since then, she had been working as part of the administrative staff at the 32nd Street medical clinic and attempting to regain her residency status.

But Navy officials said the situation apparently was not working out. Officials had wanted her to go to Oakland for in-depth evaluations. When she refused to cooperate, they said, she was asked to undergo a performance review at the Navy Hospital in Balboa Park.

It was unclear how Dalrymple obtained the small-caliber handgun used in the shootings. The Navy said residents of the bachelor officers’ quarters are prohibited from keeping firearms or explosives in the dormitory. Bolenbach, with the FBI, said it was his understanding that the weapon was not a military-issued firearm.

When Dalrymple was removed from the apartment, Officer Verduzco, a six-year veteran of the Police Department, became the first member of the department’s SWAT team to be injured in the line of duty.

Baker said Dalrymple joined the Navy in February, 1976, after working at several medical laboratories in Pensacola. Her father is a general practitioner there.

Jeanie Regimbal said her sister was stationed in San Diego in January, 1986.

She said Dalrymple began having problems as soon as she started the neurosurgery residency and that she was not allowed to perform certain medical procedures, “not because she couldn’t but because she was being discriminated against, because she was a woman.”

“That didn’t sit well with her,” Regimbal said. “She is very outspoken. And she was fighting to work and to learn. But they accused her of harassing them and not trying to get along. She took her lumps.”

But Regimbal said the situation deteriorated. She said her sister was ordered to take a urinalysis in February and refused, and that she also had been hospitalized by the Navy against her will. She said her sister also was threatened with being sent to the brig for insubordination.

She added that her sister would have fired a gun only in self-defense, out of fear of what officials wanted to do to her.