Man kills wife, self at Atlanta hospital

<p>Hours after a Lawrenceville man fatally shot his wife in her second-floor intensive care hospital room and then killed himself Monday morning, the hospital seemed to be back to its normal routine, with patients and visitors coming and going as freely as the ambulances.</p><p>Authorities and hospital security were buzzing around the emergency room entrance early Monday after Donald Shields, 71, walked into St. Joseph's Hospital and shot his wife, Beverly, before shooting himself at about 6 a.m.</p><p>Like many hospitals, St. Joseph's does not have metal detectors, and hospital officials said the incident happened "during a normal visit."</p><p>Fulton County Police spokesman Cpl. Gary Syblis said Beverly Shields, 70, had been in the hospital's intensive care unit for a couple of weeks _ which likely would have made her husband a familiar face to the hospital staff.</p><p>Hospital staff, patients and visitors coming in and out of St. Joseph's emergency room entrance did not seem shaken by the morning's events, though some were curious to see television trucks and cameras in the parking lot. Landscape workers trimmed greenery near the entrance.</p><p>Syblis said the shooting happened in the intensive care unit. He could not confirm reports the wife had undergone open heart surgery, though he did say her recovery from her illness was not going well and that she had been at the hospital several weeks, or that the shooting was a mercy killing.</p><p>Syblis also declined to say what type of gun was used or how the man got it into his wife's hospital room.</p><p>St. Joseph's, founded by the Sisters of Mercy in 1880, is Atlanta's oldest hospital. The 360-bed facility in north Atlanta specializes in cardiac care.</p>

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