This photo provided by the Carson City Sheriff 's Departmentshows William Dresser. Dresser was arrested Sunday Jan. 19, 2014, after firing one shot with small-caliber semi-automatic handgun that struck his wife in the chest at Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center in Carson City. Dresser was placed on suicide watch at a local jail. (AP Photo/Carson City Sheriff Department)
January 19, 2014 - 9:57 PM
RENO, Nev. - An 88-year-old man accused of shooting and critically wounding his wife Sunday at a Nevada hospital was placed on suicide watch at a local jail, authorities said.
Carson City Sheriff Ken Furlong said William Dresser was arrested after firing one shot with small-calibre semi-automatic handgun that struck his wife in the chest at Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center in Carson City. No other injuries were reported. The woman was a patient in a third-floor room when she was shot around 11:30 a.m.
The woman's name and age were not immediately released. Her injuries are considered life-threatening, and she was transferred to Renown Regional Medical Center in Reno, Furlong said.
Dresser was booked into the Carson City Jail on suspicion of attempted murder and was on suicide watch, the sheriff said. His bail was set at $225,000, he said.
Dresser, who recently bought the gun, came to his wife's room in the rehabilitation ward, where she was alone, and shot her in the chest, Furlong said. No details of why she was admitted to the hospital were released, but officials don't suspect foul play.
Hospital security personnel and state Department of Corrections officials at the scene quickly detained the man until sheriff's deputies arrived.
The Carson City hospital issued a statement saying the shooting was "a targeted situation" that prompted a two-hour lockdown of the facility.
A woman who answered a phone call at a listing for a William Dresser in nearby Minden said she was too busy to talk Sunday afternoon.
Dresser has no known prior criminal history in the Carson City area, Furlong said.
The shooting comes about a month after a gunman walked into a medical facility next to the Reno hospital and killed one doctor and shot another before committing suicide.
Alan Oliver Frazier, 51, made it clear in a suicide note that he was targeting physicians at Urology Nevada in the Dec. 17 attack.
Frazier complained of pain and fatigue for years in an Internet chat room and to neighbours— symptoms he blamed on a botched vasectomy that the centre disputes.
News from © The Associated Press, 2014