‘Gwen deserved better than this’: Slain Las Vegas doctor remembered

Dr. Gwendoline Amsrala had hoped to spend the rest of her life caring for critically ill patients.

But that dream was cut short one week ago when she was was stabbed to death April 15, a day after celebrating the end of her first year of residency at UMC with other resident physicians who, like her, received their medical degrees last year from UNLV’s Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine.

On Friday, her fellow resident physicians came together to remember their friend and colleague.

“She shared with me her aspirations to become a critical care physician and she wanted more than anything to spend the rest of her life caring for patients and for her community,” resident Dr. Tammera Flores said at a the afternoon news conference outside the medical school at 625 Shadow Lane.

“She will be sorely missed, not only by her colleagues and her loved ones but by the thousands of patients that she would have treated over the course of her career,” Flores said. “Gwen deserved better than this.”

Had Amsrala lived, “she’d likely be working in an ICU and there is no doubt in my mind and no doubt in any of my colleague’s minds either that she would have been an incredible provider for patients,” said fellow resident Dr. Omar Sanyurah.

“She had this sarcastic humor about her and that is certainly something that I’ll miss,” Sanyurah said. “No matter what was going on throughout the day you could always count on her to crack a joke here and there and make things a little bit better.”

Resident Dr. Michael DiCaro said he believed Amsrala would have gone on to make great strides.

“She would have been an amazing private practice physician or an educational physician in an academic setting,” DiCaro said. “She would have made true changes to medicine if she had been able to.”

“She was an amazing friend,” DiCaro added. “She was pleasant. She lit up the room, she was witty, she was fun and she’s truly missed by everyone who knew her.”

The residents spoke in front of a group of other colleagues who came to share their grief for Amsrala, who, Flores said, was known for speaking out for better pay and working conditions for resident physicians.

Residents typically work three to five years, similar to graduate education, in a hospital in the specialty of their choice before proceeding as full-time doctors, Kerkorian school spokesman Paul Joncich said.

“Gwen was a fierce advocate for all of us,” Flores said, “which is why I for one would like to see justice served to the person who stole her from us in this very tragic, violent and criminal way.”

Amsrala’s husband, Shiva Charan Gummi, 33, was arrested at the couple’s home in the 1300 block of Torington Drive where she was pronounced dead Saturday with stab wounds to her arms, abdomen and throat, the Metropolitan Police Department reported.

Gummi faces a charge of open murder and is being held without bail at the Clark County Detention Center, jail records show.

His next day in Justice Court is May 2.for a status check and he is being represented by the public defender’s office, based on court records

Originally from Reno, Amsrala lived in Las Vegas for the past several years, Sanyurah said. Her father still resides in Reno, her mother in Las Vegas suffering from a terminal illness and Amsrala had been her primary caretaker, he said

A GoFundMe page set up to defray costs of her funeral and her mother’s health expenses met the $10,000 goal within only six hours, doubled that the next day and has tripled it since, Sanyurah said.

The fund reached more than $32,000 as of Friday afternoon, according to the fundraising website.

Amsrala’s viewing service is scheduled for 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday at the Davis Funeral Home, 1401 S. Rainbow Blvd., according to her GoFundMe page.

Her funeral, open to the public, will be 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. Thursday at the St. Joseph Husband for Mary Catholic Church, 7260 W. Sahara Ave.

Contact Jeff Burbank at jburbank@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0382. Follow him @JeffBurbank2 on Twitter.