ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Rochester police are still trying to figure out why 70-year-old Robert Abert shot and killed his 94-year-old mother Florence Abert before turning the gun on himself inside the Pearl Nursing Center in Rochester on Sunday.

The initial call came in as a possible active shooter inside the nursing home which drew dozens of first responders to the scene. As News10NBC reported on Monday, for a short period of time other residents and employees inside the nursing center were unsure whether they were in direct danger until police cleared the facility room by room and found both Aberts dead.       

The City of Rochester and Monroe County’s Emergency Medical Director Dr. Jeremy Cushman was tasked with making sure that EMTs and paramedics could get to anyone else inside who needed help. “I can’t imagine the staff and the residents of the facility having lived through that experience. There are no words to describe what that experience was like for them,” he tells News10BC. 

That’s why Dr. Cushman, paramedics, and firefighters spoke with every one of the residents in the moments after the shooting. “As we went into every room we just wanted to reassure them that they were safe, that there was, at that point, no concern for their safety but we needed to move them out so police could conduct the investigation,” he recalls.

The EMS teams then carefully moved the residents and the medical equipment they needed away from the crime scene.

“Fortunately, there is a large room right off the first floor that was commandeered if you will, to be able to move all of these individuals and it was single digits, but some of them have certainly had some complex medical needs, and we were able to move them all in there so that the facility staff could essentially go right back to work and start caring for them,” says Dr. Cushman. 

EMS teams, police, and firefighters will now meet to discuss how the situation was handled, assess their response, and see if there’s anything they can do differently, in the unfortunate event, they ever experience something like this again.

The administrator of the Pearl Nursing Center and the SEIU1199 Union which represent most of its employees are working to offer residents and workers any counseling services they may need. 

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