Accused Killer of Nurse, Trainee Blames Hospital for Rampage

Bradford Warren Powers Jr., accused of killing two and wounding two in a rampage at Mission Bay Memorial Hospital, said Wednesday that he feels “ill inside” for the families of the victims but blames the hospital for the shooting because it negligently treated his father.

“I know what I did was wrong--there is no question about that. But there were circumstances beyond my control,” Powers said in an interview with The Times from the downtown jail where he is being held in lieu of $2.5-million bail. “I admitted to the actual, you know, shootings. But my defense is based on the facts of what brought me to that point.

“There is just so much a person can take. The hospital--they were the most negligent. It’s criminal negligence, to me, what they did to my father. And if they hadn’t been negligent then this whole tragedy could have been avoided.”

Powers, 46, described himself as a gentle man who has never “punched with a closed fist,” or aimed a gun at anyone “until this horrible, horrible incident.”

“I am the last person in the world to hurt anyone. I won’t even swat a fly. If one lands on me, I blow it aside. Unless it’s constantly irritating me, landing on me, landing on me. And then maybe I smash the poor guy.”

Something snapped, Powers said, after the death of his father, Brad Powers Sr., 75, who had gone to the hospital’s emergency room twice in two days. On Powers Sr.’s second visit, doctors say they did everything possible but were unable to save the man, a well-known architectural illustrator who died after suffering a heart attack April 14.

Informed in the emergency room’s waiting area of his father’s death, Powers became angry. He returned to the family’s La Jolla home, where he lived with his parents and his two children. There, he said, he drank a bottle of vodka.

Powers returned to the hospital emergency room eight hours after his father’s death and fired eight rounds with a .22-caliber revolver, police say. A nurse and student medical trainee were killed; a doctor and a patient’s father were wounded.

“I was drinking to relax and it just magnified the problem. I might as well tell you now, I feel ill every day, constantly ill inside to think that I did what I did to these people. I did it but I wasn’t in my right state of mind with that damn vodka,” Powers said Wednesday.

Police say that Powers did not appear to be under the influence of any drugs or medication when he surrendered. They say a blood test showed that he was not drunk--a fact that Powers hotly disputes. Powers said that although he could not remember the exact time of the shooting, he recalled that police did not test him until 12 to 15 hours after he had been drinking.

About an hour after the shooting, Powers turned himself in to Oceanside police. After calling police headquarters from a pay phone, he waited for their arrival.

During an arraignment last week, Powers pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder and three of attempted murder.

Powers Sr. had gone to the hospital emergency room April 13, complaining of shortness of breath. He was treated and released. Early the next morning, he returned to the hospital, complaining of abdominal pain. Doctors then discovered an abdominal aneurysm, a condition they said was not present the previous day. Telling the family that surgery was the elder Powers’ only chance for life, doctors operated. But Powers Sr. suffered a heart attack and died on the operating table at 8:40 a.m.