2 dead after ex-worker's hospital shooting spree

updated 5:44 a.m. ET Nov. 27, 2008

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A worker returned to an Alaska hospital a day after being fired and unleashed a shooting spree that left one of his ex-supervisors dead and another critically wounded before he was fatally shot by state police.

Armed with a rifle and handgun, Joseph Marchetti fired multiple shots just before 10 a.m. Wednesday inside Central Peninsula Hospital in Soldotna, a small community southwest of Anchorage, authorities said.

The gunfire sent people scattering, hospital spokeswoman Bonnie Nichols said.

"People were running for their lives," she said.

The two hospital employees shot by Marchetti had been his former supervisors.

Mike Webb, 55, died two hours after the shooting, Nichols said. Margaret Stroup, 57, shot multiple times in the chest, was listed in critical condition and was to be flown to a hospital in Anchorage, she said.

Webb was the hospital's information services director and Stroup is the imaging services director.

Marchetti, 48, had worked in the hospital's imaging department until he was fired Tuesday, Nichols said. She had no information on why he was fired.

Nichols said Marchetti was shooting randomly through the main corridor before he left the hospital.

The hospital's chief financial officer, Jason Paret, heard the first shot and went around a corner to see what was going on, encountering the gunman, Nichols said.

"Marchetti started running after him, but he managed to get away," she said. "As he ran, he was yelling at co-workers that a gunman was on the loose."

Marchetti was shot in the hospital's parking lot in a standoff with troopers who had set up a perimeter outside the facility.

Three troopers fired their weapons, Alaska State Police spokeswoman Megan Peters said. Under department policy, the officers will be placed on administrative leave for three days.

Marchetti moved to Alaska a year ago. He previously worked at Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Nichols said.

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