ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 10, 1996 TAG: 9604100068
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: S.D. HARRINGTON AND LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITERS
NOTE: Fatality
Miriam Neutze was expected to leave Lewis-Gale Hospital sometime this week. But the 71-year-old woman knew that she would not return to her Lexington home.
Surgery last summer had left her paralyzed from the waist down. She had been transferred in January from Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for rehabilitation at the Salem hospital, where her husband visited her faithfully. Her next stop was to be a nursing home.
But during a visit to her hospital room shortly before noon Tuesday, police say, Frank Neutze, also 71, shot his wife in the head as she sat in her wheelchair. Then he turned the .38-caliber pistol on himself.
She was pronounced dead at the scene; he died in surgery an hour later.
Police found a handwritten note left next to a bouquet of yellow flowers. The note, which listed only phone numbers for the Neutzes' daughters, was the only lead for detectives as they tried to determine a motive for what they are calling a murder-suicide.
Friends and neighbors of the couple could only speculate that Miriam Neutze's lengthy illness was too much for them to bear.
After surgery for an aneurism of an aorta, Miriam Neutze lost the use of her legs and her kidneys, and she breathed through a tube in her throat.
Although she was expected to be discharged to a nursing home later this week, her husband was depressed that she was not expected to return home any time soon, those closest to the couple say.
"Frank had been quite depressed," said Pete Lincoln, who lived across the street from the couple. "He loved her.''
"They were looking forward to taking a cruise when she became well enough," he said.
"I believe it was an act of love," said Jill Stockwell, a next-door neighbor. "They were both very active people, and the prognosis with her paralysis was not good. ... I believe it was just too painful for both of them to see each other going through this."
The Neutzes had lived in an upscale Rockbridge County neighborhood for about seven years. A graduate of Cornell Law School, he was retired from practicing law in southern New Jersey.
In addition to playing tennis and bridge, she was a volunteer at Stonewall Jackson Hospital in Lexington. Friends, who knew her as "Betty," say she also was a historian.
"I just knew her as one of the most kindest, gentle people in the world," said Pat Winans, who worked with Miriam Neutze at the hospital.
The community showed it was pulling for Miriam Neutze's recovery.
During a recent blood drive in her honor, at least 50 people showed up, Lincoln said.
"I had a tremendous amount of respect for her as a person, but also her sense of devotion to the community," said a friend who asked not to be named.
At a news conference late Tuesday afternoon, police and hospital officials gave few details on Miriam Neutze's medical condition.
The inpatient rehabilitation unit where she was staying treated patients recovering from strokes and surgery, said William Downey, president of Lewis-Gale Medical Center. He said she had a heart condition and other health problems and that she and her husband had talked with a hospital attendant about getting her discharged.
"We can speculate on several things. At this point, we would not want to speculate on a reason" for the shooting, Salem Police Captain Jeff Dudley said.
He said police are considering all circumstances of the shooting, including the possibility of a mercy killing.
Shortly after the shooting, hospital officials evacuated the fourth floor and sealed it off to visitors. The only indication that something had gone wrong was an emergency call over the hospital's loudspeakers and a bullet hole in the window of room 402.
Outside the hospital, a detective swept through the grass and parking lot in hope of finding the bullet.
At the same time, hospital administrators found themselves responding to questions about security in an area where people constantly come and go.
Downey said the hospital does not require visitors to pass through metal detectors or security checkpoints.
"As you know, being a hospital we have family members and friends visiting throughout the day," he said. No one saw Frank Neutze carrying a gun or doing anything that would have indicated that he was a threat.
"I will say that this was a nonpreventable incident," Downey said
But in light of what happened, he added, "we will obviously be looking at our procedures.
"With what is happening in society, we are constantly looking at our safety procedures and how we do things. Obviously we will continue to do that, but this is just one more sign of what is happening in society."
Downey said it was the first such incident at Lewis-Gale. Michael Ballantyne, vice president of facility services for Carilion Health System, said he was not aware of a similar occurrence at the company's 14 hospitals, which include Roanoke Memorial and Community Hospitals in Roanoke.
But a recent incident at Bedford County Memorial Hospital illustrated that health-care facilities - and emergency rooms in particular - can be the setting for volatile events.
After a shooting in Moneta left two people wounded earlier this year, a crowd of about 30 of their friends and relatives gathered in the emergency room and created a disturbance. Two Bedford County deputies attempted to disperse the crowd and were injured when a fight broke out.
Because emergency rooms are the most likely place for emotions to run high, Carilion staffs the areas around the clock with state-certified police guards, Ballantyne said.
And when hospital officials are aware that a patient might be in danger, they take steps that include moving the patient to a different room, posting security guards in the area and issuing a "no news policy" that prohibits doctors or nurses from releasing information about the patient's condition to news media.
But it is more difficult to deal with unexpected threats in other parts of a hospital - especially in an area that most people consider "dedicated to healing as opposed to being a police state," Ballantyne said.
"It's a difficult situation, because you're trying to maintain the dignity of the patients and their families, and at the same time you're trying to ensure their safety."
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
LENGTH: Long : 120 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS/Staff. A Salem detective wearingby CNBprotective gloves investigates the scene of what police are calling
a murder-suicide that took place Tuesday at Lewis-Gale Hospital.
color. KEYWORDS: FATALITY ROMUR