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Posted: 12/19/2013 08:38:30 AM PST
By SCOTT SONNER and MICHELLE RINDELS— Associated Press
Police said Frazier had a surgery in 2010 and claimed to have adverse symptoms because of it.
RENO — A suspect in a deadly hospital shooting in Reno left a suicide note before killing a doctor and himself this week, and claimed he had surgery botched three years ago, police said today.
Two other people were wounded.
Police didn’t outline a motive, but the new details could give a fuller picture of why the urology clinic was targeted.
Police also confirmed that the shooter was 51-year-old Alan Oliver Frazier. Police found the notes when they searched his home in the Lake Almanor area on Wednesday.
“Inside, we located a typed letter indicating the suspect’s intention to commit this horrific act,” said Reno police Lt. William Rulla. “We also located other firearms within the residence, as well as notes indicating the suspect’s actions during this incident were to be his final actions.”
But it was not immediately clear if the unspecified procedure was performed at Urology Nevada, the site of the shooting on Tuesday, or if either of the two doctors who were shot had been involved in the operation.
However, police said Frazier made statements at the time of the attack that he was looking for physicians from the office, not patients, police said, citing witness statements.
Detectives were in the process of securing Frazier’s medical records to determine the nature of his surgery and other details.
There were about 100 people in the office building when authorities were alerted about the shooter.
Plumas County Sheriff Greg Hagwood said his agency helped Reno police execute a search warrant Wednesday at Frazier’s home near Lake Almanor, about 150 miles from Reno.
Hagwood said the man lived alone and had no significant run-ins with the law during his two decades in the community.
Authorities said Frazier used a 12-gauge shotgun in the attack and was also carrying a Derringer pistol and a fully loaded .40-caliber handgun, neither of which police believe he fired.
Police identified the slain doctor as Charles G. Gholdoian, 46, a urologist at Urology Nevada. His colleague, Dr. Christine Lajeunesse, was conscious Thursday and remained in critical condition at Renown.
Lajeunesse and Shawntae Spears, 20, who was accompanying a family member on a doctor visit, each were shot once. Spears’ condition has improved from critical to serious, the hospital said.
Frazier’s former fiancee, Stephanie Wright-West, told The Associated Press that Frazier took medication for depression when they were together in the mid-1990s. She said his behavior would change significantly without his antidepressants, and he had been suicidal in the past.
Wright-West, 46, said she dated Frazier for about a year and a half after she met him at his work at a Plumas County power plant. They chose a home and lived together there for about six months before Frazier decided he didn’t want to get married and returned to the Lake Almanor area, she said.
“It was horrible,” Wright-West said about the breakup. “I thought everything was fine, but I didn’t know what was going on in his head.”
Frazier took Prozac but didn’t like being dependent on the medication and would sometimes stop using it, she said. He would then become less confident, she said, and start telling her things weren’t working out.
Before he started taking the drug, she said, co-workers found Frazier on a mountain with a gun in his truck and were able to talk him out of killing himself.