Man Held in Hospital Shootings Hangs Self

Bradford Powers Jr., accused of killing two people and shooting two others in the emergency room of Mission Bay Hospital, was found Friday hanging from a bed sheet tied to the bars of his jail cell in what authorities called an attempted suicide.

Powers, who many years ago was reported to have mental problems, was taken to San Diego General Hospital, where he was listed in critical condition in the intensive care unit.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Glenn Revell said Powers was being held in a one-man cell on the fourth floor of the County Jail downtown when a deputy making a routine check found him unconscious at about 3 a.m., hanging by his jail-issued bed sheet. A deputy had last checked the cell at 2:30 a.m.

Powers had been moved to the single cell shortly after 11 p.m. Thursday, after complaining to a supervising deputy that his life was in danger if he stayed in his second-floor group-holding cell.

Revell said Powers was “either unable or unwilling” to say why he was scared.

Several hours earlier, at about 5:15 p.m. Thursday, Powers was seen by psychiatric security personnel, though the reason for that visit was not disclosed.

After he was found hanging, deputies and jail medical personnel began life-saving procedures, including giving cardiopulmonary resuscitation and oxygen, though they were unable to detect a pulse or any breathing.

Paramedics arrived about 3:15 a.m. and they were able to detect a pulse, Revell said.

Powers was then taken to the hospital, where nursing supervisor James Marx said he was in critical condition and under police guard.

Powers was being held on two counts of murder, three counts of attempted murder and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon as a result of his rampage through Mission Bay Hospital’s emergency room on April 14. His bail was set at $2.5 million.

Powers, 46, who lived in La Jolla with his father, Brad Powers Sr., 75, was distraught over the death of his father at the hospital a few hours earlier. The elder Powers, a well-known illustrator with a history of health problems, had been taken to the emergency room complaining of severe abdominal pain.

Fearing an abdominal aneurysm, doctors decided on surgery after consulting with the younger Powers. But the elder Powers died on the operating table.

About eight hours later on a Saturday afternoon, a distraught younger Powers returned to the emergency room with a .22-caliber handgun.

He confronted two nurses at a desk and screamed, “You killed my father!”

Powers shot and killed one of the nurses, Deborah Kay Burke, 36. He walked through the room and killed Edward Rooney, 30, who was on the first day of his job training as an emergency room technician.

An emergency room doctor, Michael Hughes, was wounded, as was Fred Mowrer, a 38-year-old attorney from Albuquerque, N.M. Vacationing with his family in San Diego, Mowrer had taken his 2-year-old daughter to the hospital for medical treatment.

In a jailhouse interview with The Times two weeks after the shootings, Powers admitted he shot the people and felt bad about it, “but my defense is based on the facts of what brought me to that point.”

“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,” said Powers, adding that something “snapped” after his father died. He said he went home, drank 1 1/2 quarts of vodka and then went back to the hospital with a gun.

Powers has had psychiatric problems dating back at least 25 years, when his father went to court to have him examined for mental illness because he was “very hyperactive” and “on the verge of violence.” But the elder Powers withdrew his petition five days after he filed the request.