Hospital Killer Dies of Suicide Attempt

A La Jolla man who went on a shooting rampage at Mission Bay Hospital in April, killing two people and wounding two others, died Friday, one week after attempting suicide in his jail cell.

Bradford Powers Jr., 46, died at 9:40 a.m. at UC San Diego Medical Center, hospital spokeswoman Leslie Franz said. Sheriff’s Department officials said Powers had tried to hang himself with a bedsheet tied to the bars of his cell.

A sheriff’s deputy found Powers unconscious and he was rushed to San Diego General Hospital in critical condition. He was later transferred to UCSD Medical Center. Franz said Powers’ condition never improved from critical. She would not say whether he ever regained consciousness.

An autopsy is scheduled for today, Deputy Coroner Max Murphy said.

Powers had been charged with two counts of murder, three counts of attempted murder and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon as a result of the April 14 shootings in Mission Bay Hospital’s emergency room. His bail had been set at $2.5 million.

Powers committed the shootings hours after his father, Bradford Powers Sr., 75, died during surgery at the hospital. The elder Powers had gone to the hospital complaining of severe abdominal pain.

Emergency room physicians feared an abdominal aneurysm and decided on surgery, after consulting with the son. The elder Powers died on the operating table.

His distraught son returned to the hospital about eight hours later with a .22-caliber handgun and confronted the emergency room staff. Nurse Deborah Kay Burke, 36, and Edward Rooney, 30, an emergency room technician, were shot and killed. It was Rooney’s first day on the job.

Michael Hughes, an emergency room doctor, and Fred Mowrer, a 38-year-old attorney from Albuquerque, N. M., were shot and wounded. Mowrer and his family were vacationing in San Diego and he had taken his 2-year-old daughter to the hospital for medical treatment.

Powers admitted in a jailhouse interview with The Times that he shot the victims, blaming what he said was the hospital’s negligence in treating his father.