Albuquerque Journal

UNMH Has Had Share of Scary Incidents
By Martin Salazar, Journal Staff Writer

The question on many people's minds following last year's Virginia Tech tragedy was: "Could it happen here?"
   
Ask any campus safety official in the country the question, and the response will likely be that it could happen anywhere. Not just in Blacksburg, Va., or at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, or at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge.
   
New Mexico higher education entities have faced their own harrowing experiences in the past, many of them at this state's only teaching hospital. Take a string of incidents that occurred at University of New Mexico Hospital in December 2005 and January 2006.
   
In each case, university officials felt compelled to march into court and obtain restraining orders banning these people from the university.
   
"We try to resolve the situation before having to go to get a restraining order," said hospital spokesman Sam Giammo. "We only do that when we feel there is a viable threat that our staff members or patients would face."
   
State district court records tell the stories:
   
The Christmas card seemed innocent enough.
   
"For a special doctor at the holidays," it read, a small wreath adorning its cover.
   
But the card— mailed to the home of a University of New Mexico physician three days before Christmas 2005— didn't contain Christmas cheer.
   
The rambling note referenced the writer's prowess with a rifle.
   
"What's to stop a dying man," he wrote.
   
Sent by a patient and the husband of a woman who had been denied a job by the physician, the card contained what police called veiled threats.
   
"You hurt my wife for no reason ... " the man wrote. "I'm coming to see you."
   
Pepper spray
   
The infant girl's mother was convinced the emergency room nurse had hurt her child that January day in 2006.
   
Days later, the woman returned to the hospital and asked to speak to the nurse in private. Believing the woman was there to apologize, the nurse agreed.
   
Moments later, the nurse was screaming, having been sprayed with pepper spray. Security officers found a stun gun and long, sharp scissors on the woman. Days earlier, she had reportedly talked about cutting the nurse's throat.
   
'Shooting spree'
   
When UNMH severed ties with one of its cardiology technicians in December 2005, it wasn't on good terms. A month later, he reportedly told one of his former co-workers that if he found out he only had six months to live, "I would go on a shooting spree of UNMH management, starting at the top."
   
That's not funny, the co-worker remembered saying.
   
"It wasn't a joke," he reportedly replied.