Friend Kills AIDS Patient, Himself at Cedars-Sinai

A close friend of a terminally ill AIDS patient shot and killed the dying man in his hospital room at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Tuesday and then killed himself, authorities said.

“He was a very close friend,” hospital spokesman Ron Wise said. “He entered the room and shot the patient. He then turned the gun on himself.”

Authorities identified the dead patient as Phil Jenkins, 35. The other man was not identified, pending notification of relatives.

Jenkins, who was diagnosed as having acquired immune deficiency syndrome about a year ago, had been hospitalized for about three weeks, hospital officials said.

His friend “was well known to the hospital staff because he has visited many times,” Wise said.

Los Angeles Police Lt. Willie Pannell said the men apparently exchanged no words before the murder-suicide at 5:30 p.m. in Jenkins’ fifth-floor room.

“We know they were close friends,” Pannell said. “How close, I don’t know. Shots were heard by people passing by.”

A patient in a nearby room, one of the first to arrive at the shooting scene, said he and a doctor entered the room shortly after the shots sounded.

“I heard three shots,” said the man, who asked that he not be identified. “His wall and my wall are together. I heard he was real sick.

“I went in and saw him lying there in bed on his side. The friend was on the floor lying right by the chair.”

The patient said that police came to his room shortly after the incident, carrying with them the gun apparently used in the shooting.

“It was a pretty big gun in a plastic bag,” he said. “It looked like a .45.”

Other patients and visitors on the fifth floor said they heard several loud noises but did not realize until later that they were gunshots.

“There were two or three loud bangs,” said another patient, who asked to remain anonymous. “I thought it was a door slamming. Then there was a lot of screaming by people saying, ‘There’s a man with a gun in there. . . . ‘ There was a lot of confusion. No one knew what to do.”

The patient said officers investigating the shooting were wearing masks, gowns and gloves and the room was cordoned off. He said none of the patients were told that one of the dead men was an AIDS patient.

A visitor to a nearby room said a nurse went into the room where the shooting occurred and began screaming.

“This thing happened right next door and no one knew it,” said the man, who asked to remain anonymous. “She just opened up the door and found two bodies. And then there was just chaos.”

The shooting occurred a month before Cedars is to open a $2.5-million, 24-bed AIDS treatment center that will “serve the medical and psychosocial needs of AIDS patients,” Wise said. “It reflects a new attitude toward AIDS patients--that they are best served not when they are spread out but when they are placed together.”

David Kessler, president of a firm that provides home nursing and hospice care for AIDS patients, said hospitals with AIDS treatment units “really try to see the friends and the family as part of the treatment. We make a concerted effort to bring in the friends and close ones--the lovers--and also assess their needs.

“Someone in our medical care system has been in touch with this man (Jenkins), and it is a shame that no one could see that there was trouble brewing. There may not have been anything that the physician or the staff could have spotted, but the patient and his friend probably cried out to someone.

“It’s a shame that there wasn’t someone who was keen and understands how to watch out for these problems.”

Dr. Neil Schram, a member of the Los Angeles County Medical Assn. AIDS Committee, said Tuesday’s shooting incident underscores the need for a top-quality treatment center for the disease, such as the one set to open at Cedars.

“What this shows really is the need for psychological and psychiatric support that AIDS patients need,” Schram said. “And that’s the kind of support those units provide.”

The AIDS treatment center was approved last May after months of infighting among physicians and staff members. In advisory votes, physicians and obstetrical employees voted to reject the proposed center, arguing that Cedars should not devote space and staffing to an AIDS unit when it is also launching ambitious heart, liver and lung transplant units.

Other groups--including nurses, pediatricians and administrators--supported the center that is funded by friends and relatives of the late gay rights activist Sheldon Andelson, a former University of California regent and Democratic Party fund-raiser who died of AIDS in 1987.

Discussing possible security measures for the new treatment center, given Tuesday’s shootings, Wise said the ward will not be made “into some kind of armed camp.”

“But when tragedy like this happens, there’s going to be considerable discussion” about security.

Times staff writers Kenneth J. Garcia, John H. Lee and Frederick M. Muir contributed to this story.