Former Yale doctor killed in Tulsa shooting
A former resident at Yale New Haven Hospital was among the four victims killed this week in a mass shooting in Tulsa, Okla.
Dr. Preston Phillips, 59, was a resident at Yale’s Orthopedic Surgery Residency Training program between 1990 and 1996, hospital officials said Friday.
“On behalf of the entire Yale New Haven Health and Yale School of Medicine family, we offer our deepest sympathies to the Saint Francis Health System family over the horrific loss of Preston Phillips, MD and his colleagues,” Yale said in a statement.
Tulsa police said Phillips graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1990, and completed two fellowships at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston in 1986 and 1996. Besides his medical studies, Phillips also earned degrees in chemistry, pharmacology and theology from Emory University, police said. He was most recently working as a board-certified orthopedic surgeon for Saint Francis Health System in Tulsa “with an interest in spinal surgery, joint reconstruction — including joint replacement and the treatment of fractures,” police said.
“As an academic health institution and as physicians, we must recommit ourselves to finding a better path forward by bolstering support for behavioral health services as we do everything in our power to eliminate the scourge of gun violence in our communities,” Yale officials said in their statement.
Phillips was killed Wednesday after a gunman armed with a semiautomatic rifle and handgun stormed into the Saint Francis medical campus. Three other people were killed in the attack before the gunman died by suicide, according to police.
Police identified the other victims of the attack as Dr. Stephanie Husen, 48, Amanda Glenn, 40, and William Love, 73.
Police said the gunman was unhappy with a back surgery procedure Phillips had performed on him in May. In the days leading up to the attack, the gunman had called to complain about the procedure. He’d been seen by Phillips the day before the shooting, but had called again to complain on the day of the shooting, according to police.