2 Die in S.D. Hospital Rampage : Violence: A gunman apparently distraught over the death of his father sprays Mission Bay Memorial’s emergency room with bullets.

A La Jolla man apparently distraught over the death early Saturday morning of his father at the Mission Bay Memorial Hospital in San Diego returned later in the day with a handgun and sprayed the emergency room with bullets, killing a nurse and a hospital trainee and wounding two others, including a doctor and the father of a patient.

Bradford Warren Powers Jr., 46, called police from a pay phone about 40 minutes after the 5 p.m. shooting and turned himself in, police said. But until then hospital officials and police frantically ran through the 150-bed hospital, searched “every crevice and corner” for the gunman and desperately tried to protect any other staff members and the 70 patients from being harmed.

Nurses screamed at police out of a second-floor window. “Are we OK? Are we OK?” they yelled. “Why aren’t there any police up here?”

In the kitchen area, workers were barricaded for more than an hour as police ran through the building, refusing to allow anyone to leave. “It went on for over an hour and we were locked in there,” said one employee, describing the terror of not knowing whether they too might be injured.

Jeffrey Simmons, a hospital spokesman, described the small, quiet community hospital near Mission Bay as being turned instantly into a scene of “madness.”

“All that time we thought he was in the hospital,” Simmons said. “There was such madness that we didn’t even know whether he was in here or not. We tried, you can imagine how we tried, to protect our patients.

“We got the police to check all the rooms and had police actually going through a search of the hospital. We went room-to-room and looked in every crevice and corner. And we didn’t know until an hour later, when we found out he had been apprehended.”

Debbie Burke, a nurse at the Mission Bay facility for about five years, was shot in the chest and died during surgery about 7 p.m. at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla.

“We knew when she (Debbie Burke) left that it was critical and there was a chance she wouldn’t make it. And she didn’t,” said police spokesman Dave Cohen.

Michael Bardin, a spokesman at the Scripps hospital, said Burke suffered a massive gunshot wound in the chest. “As far as I know there was only one wound, but it caused extensive damage in the chest area,” he said. “She was in surgery for quite some time, and they were trying to save her.”

Dr. Michael Hughes, an emergency room physician at Mission Bay for about six months, was in stable condition at the Scripps hospital with five slight wounds to the abdomen and thigh. He did not require surgery, Bardin said.

“Dr. Hughes was shot multiple times in the lower abdomen and in the upper thigh,” Bardin said. “They were superficial wounds, but he’s still going to be in intensive care.”

Mission Bay Hospital officials said Burke and Dr. Hughes were taken by ambulance to the Scripps hospital because that facility is equipped with a trauma unit.

The emergency room technician, who was working as a student observer, was apparently killed execution-style, and pronounced dead at the Mission Bay hospital. His name was unavailable.

“He was just a student, he didn’t even work for us,” Simmons said. “It’s my understanding that he was shot once, and that the assailant then walked up and shot him again at close range.”

The fourth victim, identified as 38-year-old Fred Mowrer, was wounded in the buttocks. He and his wife, who were visiting San Diego from Albuquerque, had brought their 2-year-old daughter into the emergency room for treatment. Bardin said Mowrer was treated and would be released late Saturday night from the Mission Bay hospital.

Police said they recovered the handgun they believe was used in the shootings.

Simmons, the Mission Bay hospital spokesman, said that the gunman had been in the hospital emergency room early Saturday morning with his father, who died of cardiac arrest there about 5 a.m.

“I believe his father was brought into the emergency room in the middle of the night last night of an aneurysm and died of a heart attack shortly thereafter,” Simmons said. “Whether he (the gunman) was there in the hospital with him, we don’t know yet.”

Neighbors said that Powers lived with his father, Brad Powers Sr. The elder Powers was a well-known architectural illustrator whose drawings include the County Administration Center, the Civic Theatre and the Westgate Hotel.

Sgt. Ernest Ullrey of the Oceanside Police Department, located about 40 miles north of the hospital, said Powers called his department about 6 p.m., an hour after the shootings, and wanted to confess.

“He called our dispatch on the phone,” Ullrey said. “He said he was involved in a shooting in San Diego and wanted to turn himself in.

“So we sent police units out to pick him up at Hill Street and Oceanside Boulevard. He called from a phone booth there. We notified San Diego police, and based on what they told us about the shooting, we arrested him.”

Ullrey said that Powers, a resident of Castle Hills Drive in La Jolla, waited with his Corvette at the phone booth until the arresting officers arrived. He was wearing a white shirt and white pants.

At the time of the shooting, there were about three nurses, a clerk, a doctor and an emergency medical technician who was present to observe procedures, said hospital executive director Steve Hall. Technicians come in to observe and to learn, he said.

Mission Bay Memorial Hospital, a 14-year-old employee-owned facility run by the Epic Health Care Group, employs 350 physicians and 600 other support personnel, including 175 nurses, Hall said. The hospital serves patients in Pacific Beach, Clairemont, and southern La Jolla.

“It’s the first time anything like this has happened,” Hall said.

Nancy Lloyd, a nurse who has worked at the hospital for almost three years, was one of those summoned to help. Two hours after the shooting, the police had barricaded the emergency room. She and others were crying.

“Debbie Burke was a good friend of all of us. We all liked her, she was a great lady. I can’t believe she is dead,” said Lloyd, shaking and pale. “I think it is so sad, these people work in the emergency room, they give so much--and now this. I’ve worked in emergency rooms for 20 years and nothing like this has ever happened.”

Other hospital employees and their families were also stunned.

Linda Berek, an emergency room clerk, hugged a paramedic, crying “Oh my God, oh my God.” Shortly after the shooting, about 20 police officers converged near the entrance of the emergency room and prepared to enter the hospital to begin to search the rooms for the suspect. “Get back, get back--he could still be in there. We advise you to move back,” police shouted to a small group of onlookers outside.

“I’m not going anywhere, my husband is a doctor and he’s in there,” said Regina Whitney.

Whitney and her husband had been shopping when her husband had been paged and called to the emergency room to assist after the shooting. “How could this happen?” she asked.