Hospital Shooting Deaths Ruled Homicide, Suicide

The shooting deaths of a terminally ill AIDS patient and his roommate in a Cedars-Sinai Medical Center hospital room earlier this week were officially ruled a homicide and suicide by the Los Angeles County coroner’s office Thursday.

Coroner’s spokesman Bob Dambacher said a post-mortem exam showed that Philip Lee Saylor, 40, shot his longtime companion, Steven Charles Jenkins, 35, once in the head before firing a bullet into his own head. The medical examiners ran no tests to determine if Saylor himself also had AIDS since “it really has nothing to do with the actual cause of death . . . which is what we are mandated by law to determine,” Dambacher said. Police detectives, who have labeled the deaths an apparent mercy killing and suicide, said they had received unconfirmed reports that Saylor also was infected with the AIDS virus.