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 Police said they were still trying to determine what led Alan
Frazier, 51, a former power plant control room operator from
Northern California, to walk into the office of the Urology Nevada
medical group in Reno last Tuesday and open fire with a 12-gauge
shotgun.
One physician with the practice, Charles Gholdoian, was slain, and
another, Christine Lajeunesse, was wounded, along with a patient,
before Frazier shot himself to death. He also was found to have been
carrying two handguns that he apparently never fired during the
attack.
Two days later, Reno police told reporters that Frazier had left a
suicide note indicating he had singled out that doctor's office for
attack. They had learned Frazier had undergone some unspecified
surgery in 2010 that he claimed had left him with "adverse
symptoms."
Police released new details on Tuesday, a week after the shooting,
in response to questions posed by the Associated Press, revealing
that Frazier had been a Urology Nevada patient, although
investigators had yet to determine whether either doctor he shot had
treated him.
Police also confirmed that they were "actively looking into" a
report in the Reno Gazette-Journal newspaper that in 2012 Frazier
had posted a number of messages in a Yahoo online chat room called
Vasectomy Pain.
In it, according to the newspaper, Frazier said he was suffering
from post-surgical complications, including severe joint pain, body
aches, fatigue and other symptoms that left him feeling "like I got
run over by a truck."
And according to the Gazette-Journal, Frazier blamed his doctors,
saying, "Yes, yet another victim of an inhumane medical procedure
from hell." The newspaper said Frazier later wrote: "They need to go
down ..." The idea that Frazier was upset about supposed
complications from a vasectomy gained greater credence from the
release on Tuesday of a batch of recordings of emergency-911 calls
from the shooting incident.
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In one of them, a man seeking cover with several other people in a
restroom tells an emergency dispatcher that he overheard the suspect
stating that he was angry at having "had a vasectomy here and it
ruined his life."
"He said, 'As long as you're a patient, you can leave, otherwise I'm
gonna shoot you,'" the man said on the call in hushed tones.
Other callers are heard whispering frantically over the phone to 911
operators as they huddled under desks or behind tables inside
interior offices or exam rooms on the third-floor suite as they
heard gunshots going off nearby.
Police have said Frazier had no prior criminal background, but they
were still digging into his medical history, including his mental
health.
Police also have said they were interviewing Frazier's former
fiancee, Stephanie Wright-West, who was quoted by the Associated
Press as saying he had taken medication for depression and that
co-workers once talked him out of trying to kill himself when they
found him in the mountains with a gun in his truck.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman; editing by Bill Trott)
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