AUSTIN, Texas —A beloved Austin pediatrician was slain Tuesday by another doctor who police say had entered her office around closing time and held her hostage before killing her and himself.
Austin police on Wednesday confirmed that Dr. Lindley Dodson, a pediatrician with Children's Medical Group in Central Austin, was killed after she and other employees in the office were held captive by pediatrician Bharat Narumanchi.
Officers responded to Children's Medical Group around 4:30 p.m. after reports of a man armed with a gun at the business who had hostages inside.
By the time officers arrived, four hostages had escaped or were allowed to leave with the exception of Dodson, police said Wednesday.
Hostages who escaped the building told police that Narumanchi was the intruder and they connected him to Dodson through a visit he made to the office a week earlier to apply for a volunteer position.
Police also learned that Narumanchi, who was turned down for the job, was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer and was given weeks to live. Online employment records show he was a pediatrician who practiced primarily in California.
A woman who answered a phone Wednesday at a Santa Ana, Calif., medical office where Narumanchi practiced declined to comment.
In addition to a pistol and what appeared to be a shotgun, witnesses told police Narumanchi entered the office with two duffel bags. He forced hostages to tie themselves up, police said.
Austin police sent SWAT officers to the scene, where they tried to contact Narumanchi but did not get a response. Hours into the standoff, they could be heard calling out on a bullhorn, urging him to respond to calls or texts on their phone.
“Your life is very important to me,” a SWAT team member said. “And I know life is very important to you.”
Police failed to get a response from anyone in the building, so they sent in a mobile robot with a camera to enter the building. There, police spotted two bodies, and SWAT officers breached the building at around 10:45 p.m. They found both Dodson and Narumanchi dead from apparent gunshot wounds.
The case is still under investigation, police said. The investigation is focused on Narumanchi's behavior in the days leading up to the shooting. The Travis County medical examiner will be conducting an autopsy to determine the official cause and manner of death.
Dodson, 43, was a board-certified pediatrician who has practiced for several years in Austin. In 2019, she was named by Super Doctors as one of the state's top pediatricians, an honor Dodson received again in 2020. She earned her medical degree at Louisiana State University after attending undergraduate at Washington and Lee University and completed her residency at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital.
Narumanchi completed his pediatric residency training at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. In 2012, Narumanchi was charged with domestic abuse in Hawaii, and the case was later dismissed, court records show.
Court records also detail a contentious child custody battle between Narumanchi and his ex-wife.
In one court filing, Narumanchi comes across as angry and frustrated in seeking to gain full custody of his children. He described his ex-wife as "a hapless person from her childhood," who "decided to marry me, a born U.S. citizen and thus gain what she coveted and dreamt of — the U.S. citizenship that eluded her when she lived in the U.S. as a student."
Narumanchi, who represented himself in the legal proceeding, continued, "Now, for God's sake, why and how is it that (she) would bite and hit the family that is instrumental in getting her the U.S. citizenship?"
