commentary by Patrick H. Moore
Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson once wrote, “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro”, which means something like: “When things get really weird, the weird get even weirder.” Well things got very weird in a small office at Sister Marie Lenahan Wellness Center, a part of Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital in Darby, Pennsylvania on Thursday afternoon. Allow me to set the scene:
We have a 53-year-old caseworker named Theresa Hunt, a 52-year-old psychiatrist named Lee Silverman, and an angry and troubled psychiatric patient named Richard Plotts. Of these three individuals, only Ms. Hunt was unarmed. She is now dead. Plotts, the angry patient, is in critical condition from three gunshots wounds and underwent surgery at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. The psychiatrist and hero of our story, Dr. Silverman, sustained a slight bullet wound to the head, a mere grazing, according to reports.
According to Delaware County District Attorney Jack Whelan, if Plotts survives (gets out of the hospital alive), he will be charged for the murder of Theresa Hunt. On Thursday, Whelan described the “weirdness that went down” at the hospital office when things took a sudden and unexpected violent turn.
Plotts and Hunt arrived at Silverman’s third-floor office shortly before 2:30 p.m. Hunt and Dr. Silverman were presumably unaware that Plotts was carrying a firearm. An argument broke out and, according to Whelan, hospital employees near the room soon heard shouting.
Whelan further states that one hospital employee “actually opened the door, saw him pointing a gun at the doctor.” Adopting the old adage that ‘discretion is the better part of valor’, “the worker shut the door quietly and immediately called 911.”
The angry Plotts was not to be denied and then opened fire. According to Whelan, two of his bullets struck Hunt in the face. Student of human nature that he is, the canny Dr. Silverman realized Plotts was out of control. He reportedly ducked under his desk, grabbed his gun, and came up firing, striking Plotts three times.
Courageous staff members rushed toward the scene and when Plotts ended up out in the hallway, another caseworker and a doctor tackled and pinned him dawn, according to Whelan.
By this point or shortly thereafter, a fully locked and loaded police contingent arrived on the scene as “patients and doctors streamed onto the lawn and driveways surrounding the building.”
The building was evacuated and placed on lockdown.
A patient in need of an X-Ray, Allen Williams of Upper Darby, recounts that he was handing over his ID and health card for his appointment when police officers rushed into the lobby.
“They came in with guns drawn,” said Mr. Williams. “It was just a shock to me.”
A different Mr. Williams (first name of Alfred) relates that he had just concluded a doctor’s appointment and was waiting for his ride when, without advanced notice, “swarms of police officers descended on the scene.”
“They kept coming,” Williams said. “Guys with helmets and automatic weapons kept jumping out of their cars. It was total panic. . . . I saw three people come out in stretchers.”
Anna Smith is an ultrasound technician. She was on the first floor celebrating a colleague’s 60th birthday when police burst in and told everyone to leave through the back door.
Ms. Smith, who appears to be a bit of a philosopher, opined:
“There’s a sign on the door that says you have to check your weapons at the front. But you can’t expect every crazy person to do that.”
Although it could be deemed a very good thing, it was not exactly clear why Silverman, who has been practicing medicine for nearly 25 years, had a handgun at the office. A spokeswoman for Mercy Fitzgerald, Berniece Ho, informed on Thursday that “it was against hospital policy for anyone other than security guards to carry weapons.”
Donald Molineux, chief of the Yeadon Police Department, seemed unconcerned about the fact that Dr. Silverman (who I should probably call Ol’ Doc Holiday) was armed, stating that if Silverman returned fire and wounded Plotts, he “without a doubt saved lives.” (At a minimum, his own.)
Silverman, who shot Plotts three times in the torso and arm, was expected to make a full recovery.
Mercy Fitzgerald Hospital is a 213-bed hospital that serves more than 186,000 patients each year. It was founded in 1933 by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and called the incident “a tragic event for our hospital and for our community.”
What is a bit odd is the fact that no one seems to know why Plotts arrived at the third floor office with the now deceased caseworker Theresa Hunt. According to DA Whelan, Plotts has a history of psychiatric problems.
Delaware County records show that a man matching Plotts’s name and age was sentenced in 1996 to more than seven years in prison for robbing a bank in Wilmington. According to other court records, an Upper Darby man believed to be the shooter has been arrested numerous times over the last 30 years for an array of charges including assault, drugs, weapons possession, and other offenses.
At least some of Plotts’s former neighbors were on to him. A man named Bert Garcia said that Plotts “was an uneasy presence in the neighborhood until he moved out sometime in the last year” and that he was either “on drugs or heavily medicated.”
“He was a big guy,” said Garcia. “He could be intimidating.”
Garcia recounted that on one occasion, he discovered that Plotts had removed some ceiling tiles in the hallway and was “messing around with the wiring.” Another time, he told Garcia he had stabbed himself in the leg. Garcia, however, did not observe that Plotts was bleeding.
“You could tell there was something wrong,” another neighbor named Cathy Nickel said. “He needed help.“
* * * * *
Although cases such as this are shocking and could be interpreted as a sign that society is steadily deteriorating; i.e., “the weird are getting weirder”, the statistics show that the violent crime rate in America has dropped steadily over the past two decades.
In an article titled “Steady Decline in Major Crime Baffles Experts”, Richard A. Oppel, Jr. wrote in 2011:
In all regions, the country appears to be safer. The odds of being murdered or robbed are now less than half of what they were in the early 1990s, when violent crime peaked in the United States. Small towns, especially, are seeing far fewer murders: In cities with populations under 10,000, the number plunged by more than 25 percent last year.
Thus, we really are a much less violent society than we were a mere two decades ago. To what can we attribute these vastly reduced violent crime rate?
Mr. Oppel writes further:
As the percentage of people behind bars has decreased in the past few years, violent crime rates have fallen as well. For those who believed that higher incarceration rates inevitably led to less crime, “this would also be the last time to expect a crime decline,” says Frank E. Zimring, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
“The last three years have been a contrarian’s delight — just when you expect the bananas to hit the fan.”
But he said there was no way to know why — at least not yet.
“The only thing that is reassuring being in a room full of crime experts now is that they are as puzzled as I am,” he said.
Personally, I’ve long thought that the sharp decrease in violent crime and property crimes, which are also WAY DOWN, is because people today are so busy playing on their computers that they have neither the time nor the desire to go out and commit serious crimes.
It takes effort and a real commitment to find the time to read the various posts we present here on All Things Crime Blog and this is merely a single blog. And as we all know, many people regularly visit and keep up with several websites on a daily basis. Surfing the net is a time-intensive process and – the occasional “social media” violent crime notwithstanding – may well be instrumental in making America a safer, more user-friendly society.