Hopkins Hospital

Constance D. Bendann, a lifelong Baltimorean and volunteer, died in her sleep Friday at College Manor nursing home in Lutherville. She was 94. Constance David Bendann was born in Baltimore and raised off Eutaw Place on Brooks Lane. Her father, Maurice Bendann, was a principal in Bendann Brothers, now Bendann Art Galleries, and her mother, Violet, was a homemaker. "She spoke fondly of the neighborhood when growing up there," said a cousin, Lance Bendann of Homeland, who now owns and operates Bendann Galleries.

The panel that accredits U.S. hospitals has asked Johns Hopkins Hospital to review its security measures — and potential improvements — in the wake of the shooting of a doctor by the distraught son of a patient last week. Hopkins has 45 days from when Dr. David B. Cohen was shot to submit a report to the Joint Commission, the independent, nonprofit panel that offers accreditation for more than 18,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States. The commission says it identifies "sentinel events" such as postoperative complications or medical errors and uses them to improve the safety and quality of health care provided to the public.

The natural question after Dr. David Cohen was shot Thursday by the disgruntled son of patient was how the man was able to bring a handgun into the hospital in the first place. And the answer is something the thousands of people who work at Hopkins — and most any other big hospital — are all too aware of: There are no metal detectors, and the screening of patients and visitors is generally cursory at best. The head of Hopkins security said after the incident that metal detectors are extremely rare in hospitals and that installing them in a place like Hopkins, which has some 80 entrances, would be logistically difficult.

Paul Warren Pardus did not have to evade security Thursday when he took a handgun to the eighth floor of the Nelson Building at Johns Hopkins Hospital. There was nothing to stop him from carrying a gun into the hospital, no metal detector to set off an alarm. While Hopkins has long focused on safety at its sprawling medical campus in crime-plagued East Baltimore, the hospital does not require patients or visitors to pass through metal detectors, as Americans must do now at airports, courthouses and many federal buildings.

Baltimore police issued a statement encouraging people with business at Johns Hopkins Hospital to travel to the medical complex, saying a shooting incident that erupted shortly before noon has been contained to a relatively small part of the campus. However, officers at the scene were urging visitors to stay away because several major streets are shut down. The Hopkins administration gave advice that seemingly contradicted the official police statement on Twitter, urging people to stay away because of traffic problems.

A doctor is in critical condition after being shot on the eighth floor of a Johns Hopkins Hospital building, police say, and the shooter has barricaded himself in a room on the same floor. Portions of the Nelson Building, a thoracic center on its sprawling East Baltimore campus, have been placed on lockdown and other sections have been evacuated. Police have shut down numerous roads in the area of Broadway, East Monument and North Wolfe streets. South of Monument and Wolfe was sealed off with trucks, cars and tape.

Ann E. Heptinstall, a longtime volunteer and homemaker, died Sunday of Parkinson's disease at Gilchrist Hospice Care. She was 82. Ann Enraght Porter, the daughter of a lawyer and a homemaker, was born in Chesham Boise, England, and with the outbreak of World War II, moved with her family to St. Albans, Herefordshire, England. After graduating in 1946 from St. Albans School for Girls, she attended Berridge House in London. While in London, she met her future husband, Dr. Robert Hodgson Heptinstall, who was a physician completing postgraduate training at St. Mary's Hospital.

Louise Pearl "Cavi" Cavagnaro, a former World War II Army nurse and longtime Johns Hopkins Hospital administrator who helped end racial segregation at the East Baltimore hospital, died Thursday from complications of dementia at Roland Park Place. She was 90. Miss Cavagnaro, the daughter of Italian immigrant parents, was born and raised in Portland, Ore., where she graduated in 1937 from Franklin High School. After earning her nursing degree from Oregon Health Services University — now part of the University of Oregon — she enlisted in the Army in 1943.

Dr. Grover M. Hutchins, who had been director of autopsy services at Johns Hopkins Hospital and was a world-renowned pathologist in the field of cardiac and pediatric pathology, died April 27 at a hospital in Windhoek, Namibia, from head injuries sustained in a fall. He was 77. The longtime resident of the Warrington Condominiums in Guilford was on a world cruise with his wife of 53 years, the former Loretta Bajkowski, a real estate agent, at the time of his death. "Grover Hutchins will be sorely missed, not only for what he did for science, but for the many friendships he developed and nurtured over the course of his 50 years at Hopkins," said Dr. Edward D. Miller, dean of the faculty of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine.