Giocondo “Joe” Navek, 39, was engaged to an Iranian-American woman, Shohreh Sameni, with whom he had a son. They lived in Williamstown, New Jersey. But Navek also maintained an apartment in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he lived with a mistress, Shawna Givens, 35. His fiancÈe recently broke up with him.
Navek’s life had been going downhill. About 18 months ago, he was dismissed from the residency program at a New Jersey hospital. According to his ex-fiancÈe’s mother, Forogh Mozaf-fari, Navek blamed his firing on Dr. Payman Houshmandpour, 32 a fellow resident at the hospital.
Last Wednesday morning, police say, Navek drove a little less than 20 miles from his home in Williamstown to Houshmand-pour’s home in an upscale development in Voorhees, New Jersey, not far from where both men once worked together at Virtua Hospital.
“He’s a great guy, a great father, a very smart man,” Dr. Simon Boulattouf, who had worked with both men at Virtua, said of Houshmandpour. “I was actually seeing patients when I found out.”When Houshmandpour left his home about 7:30 a.m. and got into his silver Audi in the parking lot, authorities say Navek pulled a gun and fired several shots into the driver-side window. Houshmandpour died at the scene.
The Camden County Pros-ecutor’s Office said that Navek fled in a silver Nissan and was spotted by Voorhees police. Officers pulled Navek’s vehicle over, approached the car, and ordered him to show his hands.
Navek didn’t respond, the prosecutor’s office said, but just shot himself in the head. He died later at Virtua Hospital.
Five hours later, police in North Carolina found Givens dead in the apartment she shared with Navek. She had not reported for work at the Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg for two days.
A ballistic check showed that the gun with which Navek shot himself also was used to kill Houshmandpour and Givens.
Dr. Shohreh Sameni, Navek’s ex-fiancÈe, is also listed as a participant in Virtua’s Family Medicine Residency Program.
Boulattouf said Navek was his intern at Virtua and that he had “issues at work that eventually led to his [dismissal].” Boulattouf said that one issue was with Houshmandpour, but he declined
Houshmandpour, who was born in Iran, leaves behind a wife and a 20-month old daughter. After completing his residency, he was thinking of moving either to South Carolina, where he had a job offer, or to Boston, where his wife was recently accepted in a Harvard postgraduate program. to elaborate. “It was so many factors,” he said.
The Philadelphia Inquirer quoted a former colleague who did not wish to be named as saying Navek was very abrasive with colleagues at Virtua. He said Navek had “multiple problems” with nurses and others and had argued with Houshmandpour at one point. Navek “wasn’t easy to deal with. If he was told to do certain things, he would argue about them. He wouldn’t take input from other people.”
The former colleague said, “He definitely had some anger issues. If he was confronted about something that went wrong, he would actually snap, and then he would try to find an excuse to get out of it and blame it on other people.”
In North Carolina, Kris Delgado, a local bar owner, told the Philadelphia Daily News that she had warned Givens about Navek, whom she said drank a lot and was erratic and unstable. “All the signs were there. All her friends warned her. He wasn’t right in the head,” Delgado said.
Givens had been dating Navek about five months. The two met when Navek, a captain in the Army Reserve, had been assigned to Fort Bragg for a period. Sameni moved out of their house in New Jersey and broke up with Navek when she learned about Givens, Sameni’s mother told the AP.
