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Judge guts shooting lawsuit

PITTSBURGH — A judge has gutted a lawsuit filed by a receptionist who was wounded when a former patient opened fire at a University of Pittsburgh Medical Center psychiatric hospital more than two years ago, killing another worker and wounding four others.

Allegheny County Judge R. Stanton Wettick has dismissed all claims against the deranged gunman’s mother, Susan Shick, and against UPMC’s doctors who treated but never committed the gunman, 30-year-old John Shick.

Shick walked into UPMC’s Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic on March 8, 2012, and critically wounded the receptionist, Kathryn Leight, before shooting several others. He was killed when university police responded and shot him.

The judge let stand only Leight’s claims against UPMC and the university that stem from their ownership and control of the hospital, not from whether they were negligent in their prior dealings with Shick.

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