Police: Man kills sick wife, then self, at N.Y. hospital

VALHALLA, N.Y. — A man who said he wanted to end his ailing wife’s suffering shot her to death in her bed at a suburban New York hospital Wednesday, then killed himself, police said.

Richard Delucia, 71, left a note at the couple’s condo indicating he was distraught about how his wife, Ann, 70, was suffering, Westchester County police spokesman Kieran O’leary said.

Then the husband went to his wife’s room at Westchester Medical Center with a licensed .38-caliber revolver, fired a single shot that killed his wife and then took his own life with another shot, police said.

No one else was in the room, authorities said.

Ann Delucia, whose medical condition wasn’t immediately revealed, was found in her bed, and her husband was found on the floor of her fourth-floor room at the Valhalla hospital, about 35 miles north of Manhattan, police said.

A third-party company handles security for Westchester Medical Center. People entering aren’t searched for weapons.

A study in the Annals of Emergency Medicine counted 154 shootings at hospitals in the U.S. from 2000 through 2011.

In June 2017, a doctor who had been forced to resign from Bronx Lebanon Hospital in New York City two years earlier amid a sexual harassment claim opened fire inside the hospital, killing a doctor and hurting six others, authorities said. Police said the doctor, Henry Bello, killed himself at the scene.

Hospitals have since been beefing up security. Two hospitals on Long Island recently started arming their security guards. Another now requires visitors to show identification and obtain a hospital-issued guest pass.

Other New York-area hospitals have been hiring police officers to provide security.