14 DAY TRIAL // A doctor has been found shot to death in Hoag Health Center in Newport Beach, Southern California, reports say. The man had been killed in the examination room.
Police responded to an alert at approximately 2:45 p.m. at 520 Superior Avenue, the OC Register writes, and found Ronald Franklin Gilbert lying in the exam room.
A yet unidentified man who is believed to be the shooter was found in the same room and ended up in police custody.
“Everything is safe, and there are no outstanding suspects,” Sgt. Kirk Jacobi said.
The spokesperson for the Newport Beach Police Department Kathy Lowe explained that there were no other victims in the shooting, adding that the suspect did not resist arrest.
The victim was employed at the Hoag-affiliated Orange Coast Urology center. He was practicing medicine since 1989, and had neither been involved in a malpraxis lawsuit, nor had disciplinary action filed against him.
A husband and father of two, he was described as quiet and religious by his neighbors.
“Sometimes when we would go by (the house), you could hear the music, and you'd know they were all together,” Emma Trepinski, living next door to the Gilbert family, recalls.
A man named Jeffrey Lauber told officers that he had referred a patient for surgery to Dr. Gilbert.
“I had to call the patient to say the doctor was shot. [...] You're killing people who are healing people. What's next?” he notes.
Official reports state that six or seven shots were reported at the doctor's office, on the second floor of the facility.
An office supervisor working in the nephrology laboratory on the third floor told investigators that she didn't realize she had heard gunshots, confusing them for construction sounds.
“What's going on with the world today? [...] I mean, schools, now I got to worry about going to work. This has got to stop,” Kristen Cotty comments.