Slain Yonkers doctor hailed as a man of peace

Sunday, January 7, 2007

Timothy O'Connor
The Journal News

Slain Yonkers doctor hailed as a man of peace

NEW YORK - The announcement that Yonkers police had arrested a suspect in the slaying of Dr. Leandro Lozada did little to quell the fears of mourners at the pediatrician's memorial service last night.

As a young man wearing wraparound sunglasses and carrying a small cardboard box approached the doctor's casket, some people in the packed R.G. Ortiz Funeral Home in Washington Heights thought he might be carrying a gun.

That was enough to spark a near stampede. More than 200 family members, friends, patients and colleagues of Lozada knocked over chairs, floral arrangements and one another scrambling to get to the exit to Broadway.

But there was no gun. The young man, whom Lozada's son Joel later described as "an eccentric man," was escorted out of the funeral home, spoken to by police and told not to come back.

Joel Lozada went throughout the funeral home speaking to the overflow crowd in English and Spanish, telling the mourners there was no need to panic.

"Please, I know this is difficult. I know this is all hard," he said. "But this is my father's legacy. We must have peace, we must have order. We are all safe here, I assure you."

The peace he spoke of was a mainstay of Leandro Lozada's life, friends and colleagues said yesterday. That was why there was such shock that a man who had photos of Gandhi and Mother Teresa on the wall behind the desk in his Bronx medical office would meet such a violent end, shot dead in his own home, allegedly by the home's former owner.

"He was an old-time physician," said his longtime friend and personal physician, Dr. Jose Goris. "He cared about his patients. He cared about his community."

The 46-year-old pediatrician seemed happy in his life, professionally with a thriving practice and personally with a girlfriend who is a pediatric surgeon at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, friends said.

"This was a man of the heart," said Joan O'Brien, a pharmaceutical sales representative from Pelham Manor who knew Lozada for nearly a decade. "He was a man of extreme ethics, extreme intellect and extreme kindness."

Doctors, poor mothers and small children all approached the open casket at the front of the funeral home, wiping tears from their eyes. Many reached down to touch the doctor's body. Several broke down after offering condolences to his family members and passing the large photo of Lozada smiling with a stethoscope and Looney Tunes tie around his neck.

Friends and colleagues said Lozada never mentioned Samuel Saunders, who has been charged with his killing. He never seemed threatened by anyone or spoke of being afraid, Goris said.

"I hope whoever did this, they suffer on Earth for what they took away," he said.

Lozada spoke of retiring in five years and moving back to his native Dominican Republic to offer his medical services in the poorer communities there, O'Brien said. Now, after today's services at the funeral home, his body will be flown home to the Dominican Republic for burial.

"A light has been taken away from a lot of people," O'Brien said.

Reach Timothy O'Connor at tpoconnor@lohud.com or 914-694-3523.