Slaying quickens push for med school checks
By Erik Brady and Robert Davis, USA TODAY
Robert Howard looked like an ideal candidate for medical school. His grades were good and his recommendations solid. Plus he had a certain intangible that made him stand out from the crowd: He was an Olympian who was among the finest triple jumpers in the world.
But Howard, 28, also had a violent temper, which officials at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) would not learn until mid August, when the third-year medical student killed his wife and himself, according to police.
They say he stabbed her about three dozen times at their home before jumping out of a 10th-story window on campus. His wife, Robin Mitchell, 31, was chief neurosurgery resident at the UAMS College of Medicine in Little Rock.
Evidence of Howard's violent streak was available through a criminal background check. He pleaded guilty to first-degree assault in 1998; the conviction on a Class A misdemeanor was part of a plea bargain under which felony charges of residential burglary and terroristic threats were dropped. He was accused of breaking down a door and menacing a man with a .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol.
