17 Hours -- Man Surrenders At Hospital; Nurse Killed

SANDY, Utah - A man carrying dynamite and two guns shot and killed a nurse and took over a hospital maternity ward yesterday, police said. He gave up more than 17 hours later and freed nine hostages, including a baby born during the standoff.

Police said Richard L. Worthington, a 39-year-old father of eight, said he went to Alta View Hospital to kill obstetrician Dr. Glade Curtis, who had operated on Worthington's wife two years ago to prevent her from becoming pregnant again.

Curtis fled as the siege began.

Worthington was arrested and held without bail at the Salt Lake City-County Jail for investigation of aggravated murder, eight counts of aggravated kidnapping and "possession of an infernal machine," for possessing explosive materials.

In Curtis' office, near where Worthington held the hostages, police found a foot-square package of dynamite that could be detonated by remote control. It could have wiped out half a block, said Salt Lake County Sheriff Aaron Kennard.

Experts defused the dynamite, authorities said.

Kennard said officers also found a shotgun and .357-caliber Magnum handgun they believe was used to kill the nurse.

Worthington held six adults and three infants on the top floor of a maternity wing connected to the main building by an enclosed skywalk, police said.

One of the hostages gave birth about three hours into the standoff, hospital spokesman Jess Gomez said.

The hostages calmed each other and tried not to agitate the gunman, nurse Margie Wyler said.

The siege began shortly after midnight. Dr. Brent Mabey, an emergency-room physician, said a clerk ran into the hospital to say a man with a shotgun had blown out a window in the adjacent Women's Health Center.

When police arrived, they found a woman who had been shot in the hospital's parking lot, Mabey said. The victim, Karla Roth, 37, died in the emergency room.

Roth, who was married, had been hired Sept. 5 but had only worked in the emergency room for two nights, said hospital administrator Douglas Fonnesbeck.