On a Tuesday afternoon in Reno, Nevada, the bustling calm of a medical clinic was shattered by an act of premeditated violence that claimed the life of Dr. Charles Gholdoian, a respected 46-year-old male urologist. The events of December 17, 2013, unfolded when a lone gunman, identified as 51-year-old Alan Oliver Frazier from Plumas County, California, entered the Urology Nevada office on the third floor of a building on the Renown Regional Medical Center campus.
Frazier was armed with a 12-gauge shotgun and was also carrying two other handguns.
Frazier, a former patient of the clinic, walked past the reception area and into the patient-care section, where he opened fire. Witnesses reported that he seemed to be specifically targeting physicians. Dr. Gholdoian was fatally shot in the torso. During the rampage, Frazier also critically wounded another urologist, Dr. Christine Lajeunesse, and a 20-year-old woman named Shawntae Spears who was accompanying a relative to an appointment. After inflicting the devastating harm, Frazier then turned the gun on himself, ending his own life at the scene. The entire tragic event left a community in shock and mourning the loss of a dedicated physician.
The subsequent investigation into the shooting revealed a motive rooted in the suspect's personal grievances. Police discovered a suicide note at Frazier's home, in which he expressed his intent to commit the violent act. Friends of Frazier and the note itself indicated that he believed he was the victim of a "botched" vasectomy performed in 2010 and suffered from adverse symptoms which he attributed to the procedure. He had complained that the surgery left him weak and in poor health. An extensive 1,168-page investigative report released later detailed Frazier's battle with depression and included a manifesto in which he raged about the pain and suffering he blamed on the surgery. While Frazier's focus was clearly on the physicians at that specific office, Urology Nevada stated after an internal review that they found no basis to support his allegations regarding his care. The investigation concluded that there would be no arrests as the sole suspect had died by his own hand at the scene of the crime.
