Three Killed in Michigan Shooting
Repo...@uni.com
Three Killed in Michigan Shooting
By ALEXANDRA R. MOSES
SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (AP) - A man who killed a psychiatrist and another
person
before committing suicide in the doctor's office had been treated by the
doctor
a year ago, the physician's daughter said.
Four others were wounded in Friday afternoon's shooting at the office of
Dr.
Reuven Bar-Levav, who died inside his 12th-floor suite.
The victims were shot at close range with a handgun during ``some sort
of
meeting,'' Detective Darrel Palmer said.
One man remained in serious condition with a gunshot wound to the chest,
and
three other victims were in fair condition, hospital officials said.
The name of the gunman and the other slain person were withheld by
police.
Police have offered no motive.
``It appears we've got a doctor-patient relationship,'' Police Chief
Joseph
Thomas said. ``We are still trying to determine why it happened.''
Dr. Leora Bar-Levav, a psychiatrist who practiced with her father, said
the
gunman had sought help from her father about a year ago after reading
his book,
``Sinking in the Shadow of Feeling.'' The father-daughter team
specialized in
long-term group therapy.
Ms. Bar-Levav said the gunman had been hospitalized previously and
diagnosed
elsewhere as a paranoid schizophrenic. He ``could not be treated
adequately in
our outpatient setting,'' she said.
Ms. Bar-Levav, who was not in the office during the shootings, said
witnesses
told her the gunman walked into the office and shot her father as he
stood in
the waiting room.
He then fired several rounds into a room where a group therapy session
was
being held before shooting himself, she said.
Two groups were scheduled to meet at the psychotherapy practice at the
time of
the 5 p.m. shooting. The building was evacuated afterward.
``My father had a very, very big heart and a lot of dedication to the
welfare
of people everywhere, and a lot of faith in people,'' Ms. Bar-Levav
said.
``Sometimes, he trusted them too much.''
Bar-Levav, who shifted his practice to suburban Southfield from Detroit
a few
years ago, has written at least two self-published books, the last a
1995
effort titled ``Every Family Needs a CEO.''
According to the jacket of that book, Bar-Levav was born in 1927 in
Berlin,
fled Nazi Germany with his family seven years later and went to what now
is
Israel.
In a posting on his Web site, Bar-Levav said the high school shootings
in
Littleton, Colo., in April underscored the need for ``more and better
gun
control.''
``What motivates kids and grown-ups to murder innocents is not the
presence of
guns but the absence of built-in values of right and wrong, one of the
breeding
grounds of blind hate,'' he wrote. ``This urgently needs to be
changed.''
AP-NY-06-12-99
Repo...@uni.com
Three Killed in Michigan Shooting
By JOSEPH ALTMAN Jr.
BINGHAM FARMS, Mich. (AP) - A psychiatrist who was gunned down by a man
seeking
treatment could have done little to help the severely disturbed patient,
the
doctor's family said Saturday.
``He was very, very sick,'' said Dr. Ilana Bar-Levav, who trained under
her
father and now practices psychiatry near Washington, D.C. ``He needed
more
inpatient treatment.''
Joseph Brooks Jr., 27, killed Dr. Reuven Bar-Levav and a woman and
injured four
others before killing himself at Bar-Levav's office Friday afternoon.
One of
the wounded remained hospitalized in fair condition Saturday.
Police have not identified the other victims or provided any additional
information about the shootings Friday afternoon in Bar-Levav's 12th
floor
office in Southfield.
The gunman had been diagnosed elsewhere as a paranoid schizophrenic and
had
come to the office several times, said Dr. Leora Bar-Levav, who
practiced there
with her father. The man could not be treated because he refused
necessary
medication and hospitalization, she said.
The Bar-Levav family said Saturday they don't understand what sparked
the
tragedy, but they hope Bar-Levav's research into mental stress will stop
similar incidents from happening.
Following the shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., the
72-year-old Bar-Levav wrote in an article that a return to family values
and
controls on permissiveness were necessary to prevent senseless
shootings.
``What motivates kids and grown-ups to murder innocents is not the
presence of
guns but the absence of built-in values of right and wrong, one of the
breeding
grounds of blind hate,'' he wrote.
Bar-Levav was the originator of Crisis Mobilization Therapy and of A
Unified
Theory of General Human Motivation and Behavior, both dealing with the
treatment of emotional stress.
Born in Berlin in 1927, he fled Nazi Germany with his family before
coming to
the United States.
AP-NY-06-12-99
---------------------------------------------------------
The following appears courtesy of the 6/12/99 online edition of The
Detroit
Free Press newspaper:
Southfield shooting leaves 3 dead, 4 hurt
Gunman killed 2 people, then shot himself in office tower
June 12, 1999
BY DAVID ZEMAN, MATT HELMS, JULIE EDGAR and MARSHA LOW
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
A gunman stormed a gleaming Southfield office tower Friday, killing a
psychiatrist and a woman and wounding four others. Then, without saying
a word,
he killed himself.
The shooting occurred just before 5 p.m. in the 12th-floor office of
psychiatrist Reuven Bar-Levav at the Southfield Town Center, witnesses
said.
Bar-Levav and a woman in the office were killed.
Southfield Police Chief Joseph Thomas said the shooting appeared to
involve "a
doctor-patient relationship."
But Bar-Levav's wife, Pamela Torraco, who is also a psychotherapist in
his
practice, said her husband had seen the gunman several times in 1998 but
that
"he was not a regular patient."
Details remained sketchy late Friday. Police did not immediately release
names
of the victims or the shooter.
When Southfield Fire Department Lt. Rick Rakestraw entered the office,
he found
Bar-Levav's body in the reception area. He'd been shot in the head.
After shooting Bar-Levav, the gunman then apparently burst into a
conference
room, where the shooting intensified. A woman was found slumped over,
dead from
a gunshot to the face. The others were injured, but survived. A glass
wall on
the room's far side was dotted with bullet holes.
Thomas said the number of bullet holes suggested the gunman reloaded
during the
rampage.
Rakestraw found the gunman's body in a side room, a handgun by his side.
He had
shot himself in the head.
The four people injured were rushed to Providence Hospital in
Southfield, said
Peter Goodman, an emergency-room physician. A 45-year-old West
Bloomfield man
was in serious condition with a gunshot wound that traveled through his
right
arm and then passed through his chest.
The three other victims had been shot in the arms, hands, thighs and
calves and
were listed in fair condition. They were described as a 51-year-old
Huntington
Woods man, a 49-year-old Bingham Farms man and a 49-year-old Beverly
Hills
woman.
All four patients were alert and talking.
Goodman said the victims' injuries were typical of handgun wounds at
close
range.
More than a dozen police and ambulance vehicles descended on the 3000
Tower of
the bronze three-building Southfield Town Center after the gunfire
began.
For a time, workers throughout the building remained huddled in back
offices as
they awaited word that it was safe.
"We just heard a lot of banging and people running upstairs," said Veda
Grobbel, 27, who works for an Internet company on the 11th floor. "We
were all
scared to death. We were barricading the doors."
Grobbel, of Madison Heights, said she and coworkers knew the sounds they
were
hearing were gunshots. They moved bookshelves in front of the doors and
hunkered down until police arrived.
Faisal Arabo, an insurance agent for New York Life Insurance Co., was
working
on the 25th floor when he got a call from a local TV station asking him
what he
knew about the shooting. Arabo said he looked out his window, didn't see
anything, so went downstairs to take a look.
"When the elevator door opened up, I saw two or three policemen with
machine
guns," he said. "They said, 'Get out of here. Run! Run!' "
Bar-Levav and Associates is a psychotherapy practice that specializes in
long-term group therapy. Two groups of patients were scheduled to meet
at the
time of the shooting.
Reuven Bar-Levav, founder of the practice, is the author of two books,
"Thinking in the Shadow of Feelings: A New Understanding of the Hidden
Forces
that Shape Individuals and Societies" and "Every Family Needs a CEO:
What
Mothers and Fathers Can Do About Our Deteriorating Families and Values."
In an essay written for radio broadcast after the student shooting in
Littleton, Colo., he bemoaned the nation's preoccupation with gun
control and
urged educators and lawmakers to focus on nurturing values.
"The absence of widely accepted norms of ethical behavior is damaging to
us
all, and especially to the young who are inexperienced in life. We must
re-establish some of our old, traditional norms to lessen future horrors
like
this one," Bar-Levav wrote.
The Town Center is known for its towers looming over the Lodge Freeway
just
south of I-696. Bozell Worldwide, Northwest Airlines, Mitsubishi
International
and New York Life are among its tenants, as are several law firms.
This is not the first time tragedy has visited the Town Center.
Linda Kay Paletta of Beverly Hills shot her husband Giuseppe, 42, in an
elevator at another Town Center office building in 1986. She was
acquitted
after using a self-defense argument at trial.
Medical workers, too, are sometimes targets of patients or family
members under
stress.
A Henry Ford Hospital receptionist was paralyzed and another man was
injured in
1993 when a woman entered the hospital's 10th-floor eye clinic and
opened fire.
Xenia Binney, 57, of South Lyon told police she shot the men because she
was
angry over how doctors had treated her mother at another hospital before
she
died in 1989. She was later admitted to a mental hospital.
Staff writers Amber Arellano, Brian Dickerson, Erin Lee Martin, Laurie
Mayk,
Lorene Yue and Wendy Wendland contributed to this report.