Gunman who shot Johns Hopkins doctor kills himself, his mother while barricaded from cops
Ruark/AP Members of the Baltimore County SWAT team arrive at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
A man who became "overwhelmed" when told that his mother was paralyzed during surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital pulled a gun and shot her surgeon - then killed his bed-ridden mom and himself.
For three hours on Thursday, parts of the world-famous teaching hospital were on lockdown because cops thought the gunman, 50-year-old failed screenwriter Paul Warren Pardus, was barricaded alive in his mother's room.
The all-clear was sounded when a SWAT team entered the room and found the bodies of Pardus and his mother, Jean. Both had been shot once in the head.
The doctor, spinal surgeon David Cohen, was in critical condition with a bullet in the chest, but expected to live.
"He's going to be okay. He's in the best place he could ever be - at Johns Hopkins hospital," said police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.
Most of the sprawling teaching hospital remained operational during the crisis but visitors were told to leave.
Pardus, who used the name Pardus Davis at the hospital, shot Cohen at 11:11 a.m. in a hallway outside his mother's 8th floor room, according to Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld.
"He was overwhelmed by the news of his mother's condition," Bealefeld said. "He became emotionally distraught. He removed a small semi-automatic handgun from his waistband and fired a single gunshot that struck the doctor in the lower chest."
Then Pardus ran into his mother's room. When he shot her and himself was not clear. "No one heard those shots," said Bealefeld.
The hospital wouldn't say what illness Jean Davis was suffering from, citing federal privacy laws.
But Michelle Burrell, who works in the hospital coffee shop, said she was told by witnesses that Jean Davis had been in surgery.
"Basically, he was upset about his mother being paralysed by the doctor," Burrell said.
Little was known about Pardus, who lived in Arlington, Va.
Cops said he had a very minor criminal record.
He appears to have spent the 1990s writing theatrical pieces with names like "Black Panther Cult," "Dark Justice" and "Get Back Satan." In 1996, he wrote a spec script for the New York Undercover TV show called "Vigilante."
Jacqueline Billy, a respiratory care nurse on the seventh floor, said she fled to an elevator when the shooting took place but accidentally went up to the eighth floor instead of down.
The doors opened on a crowd of cops with guns drawn, telling her to close the door.
"I was petrified, the door opened and there are a bunch of guns. You never expect that," she told the Baltimore Sun.
Two weeks ago and 30 miles away, a madman rampaged through the Silver Spring, Md. headquarters of the Discovery Channel, holding three people hostage until he was killed by cops.
Johns Hopkins is one of the founding institutions of American medicine and is consistently ranked best overall hospital in the nation.
The hospital has more than 1,000 beds, 1,700 full-time doctors and 30,000 employees.
hkennedy@nydailynews.com
A man shot a faculty physician as well as his own mother before killing himself at  in Baltimore, Maryland. The shooting occurred on the eighth floor of the Nelson Building, the hospital's main building. Baltimore police found the suspected shooter, who had been barricaded inside his mother's hospital room for several hours before killing himself and his mother.

At around 11:15 a.m.  (1515 ), an unnamed doctor was shot in the chest at a patient area of the Nelson Building's thoracic center. All major hospital facilities were placed under a lockdown, and some medical personnel were evacuated from the Nelson Building. The doctor was sent to surgery at the hospital, and police spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said that the doctor will likely survive the incident. He was not aware of any connections between the suspect and the doctor, who was in critical condition.

A nurse at the hospital told '''' that the shooter was dissatisfied with how his mother had been treated and even said that he was going to jump out of a window. The nurse said that, upon hearing gunshots, she ran.

Earlier, Baltimore area police said that they were "in the process of a tactical operation" to capture the gunman, who was holed up on the eighth floor. A spokesperson for the  (FBI) said that it had been assisting local police in the incident. A Johns Hopkins spokesperson had previously said that authorities had taken the shooter into custody, but police said that the report was incorrect.

The suspect, who had not taken any hostages, was described as a black man in his thirties. After a standoff lasting for three hours, law enforcement officers moved into his mother's hospital room, and found both him and his mother dead from gunshot wounds to their heads. The suspect was first identified as 50-year-old Warren Davis, and his mother as Jean Davis. Police later said that "Warren Davis" was an alias and that his real name was not known.

Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld, who said that the department is "treating this case as a murder-suicide," said that no officers reported hearing the shots that killed the two.  Police had previously said that the gunman had been shot and killed by police, but police later said that that report was incorrect.