HOUSTON – Colleagues and patients are mourning the death of Dr. Mark Hausknecht, a well-known cardiologist and heart doctor to former President George H.W. Bush.
The doctor was shot and killed Friday morning in broad daylight while riding his bike to work in the Texas Medical Center near 6700 Main Street. Authorities said the shooter was on a bike too.
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"My emotions are getting into it,” said Felix Sisneros, a patient of Hausknecht. “I just miss him. I really do."
Hausknecht was admired by colleagues like former nurse, Ellie Neberman. She knew him for 15 years and had worked with him at both Houston Methodist and Memorial Hermann.
“He was so kind and very much loved and appreciated by his patients,” Neberman said.
He had even garnered praise from Bush whom he treated back in 2000.
“Dr. Hausknecht is an expert at cardiology,” Bush said at a press conference in 2000.
Everyone who knew Hausknecht knew he loved to ride his bike and worried he would be hit by the busy traffic in the medical center.
“I saw him on his bicycle in the Med Center in the worst traffic,” Neberman said. “I saw him in the morning when I would get there at 5:30.”
“Last night when I saw him on the TV, I said, ‘Oh my God, my doctor!’” Sisneros said. “What happened? I thought he got run over because he told me he would ride his bike to work.”
Instead, authorities say the doctor was shot and killed Friday morning while riding his bike to work by a man on a light colored mountain bike.
"I don't know why anybody would just, the way I heard it, stop, turn around and shoot,” Neberman said. “It makes no sense."
Located at the crime scene is a growing memorial. Felix Sisneros says he started the memorial to honor a man who connected with his patients.
“He gave me time to sit down in his office and we would talk for like 30 or 40 minutes,” Sisneros said. “This morning I came over here and I came to pay my respects because Dr. Hausknecht was a wonderful doctor.”
Now the medical community, friends and family grieve. Everyone is asking why?
“Now you have family and the whole community and patients and coworkers and peers, everybody is missing a good soul from this earth,” Neberman said.