Boston Heart Surgeon Michael Davidson Killed by Patient’s Son in Hospital Rampage
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
A cardiovascular surgeon at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital was fatally shot by a former patient’s son, who later turned the gun on himself.
Dr. Michael Davidson, 44, was shot twice on Tuesday morning in an exam room at the hospital, according to the Boston Globe, and died despite emergency surgery. The shooter, Stephen Pasceri, 55, was subsequently found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gun shot.
Davidson, the director of endovascular cardiac surgery at the hospital and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, had treated Pasceri’s mother in the late summer of 2014. Pasceri’s siblings say that Pasceri came to blame Davidson for their mother’s subsequent death, according to the Associated Press.
Davidson, a father of three, was an active member of Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley, Mass. His wife Terri Halperin, a plastic surgeon, is seven months pregnant with their fourth child.
Brigham & Women’s, located in downtown Boston amid a cluster of major healthcare facilities, is a teaching hospital for Harvard Medical School.
“Dr. Davidson was a wonderful and inspiring cardiac surgeon who devoted his career to saving lives and improving the quality of life of every patient he cared for,” the hospital statement said. “It is truly devastating that his own life was taken in this horrible manner.”
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news. All donations are still being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000 until April 24.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
