‘He was an advocate for his patients’: Remembering Dr. Idris Evans
PITTSBURGH —
A UPMC doctor killed in a stabbing was remembered for being an advocate for his patients, a former PICU patient said.
In 2022, Anna Shaffer was under the care of Dr. Idris Evans when she was hospitalized with the flu and double pneumonia at 16 years old.
“I ended up in Children’s Hospital, and he was one of my first doctors in the hospital,” Anna Shaffer told Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 Reporter Jordan Cioppa.
According to police, Evans and his wife were stabbed multiple times inside their Edgewood home on Thursday morning around 12:30 a.m. Evans died at the hospital. His wife was taken to the hospital in critical condition.
Police arrested and charged Elijah Hemingway.
“He just helped me throughout my whole stay,” Anna Shaffer said of Evans.
Anna Shaffer, who now has one lung, spent five months in the PICU at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, where she was placed on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine.
Erin Shaffer recalled a time when Evans advocated for her daughter to get a CT scan, despite the complexities of the transfer.
“She was on floor five so, to transfer her to floor two for the CT scan took about two hours just to transport her,” Erin Shaffer said. “So, he pushed for that because he felt like the benefits of knowing what’s going on with her lungs was greater than the risk of her traveling down there.”
The Shaffers said Evans was there for them beyond their time in the hospital.
“There was an ECMO conference in October after she got released from the hospital in July, and he showed up. But not for the conference. He just showed up to see us and to tell us that we did receive our miracle of her healing,” Erin Shaffer said.
“He was just there to tell us that he was happy that we got our miracle and that I was alive,” Anna Shaffer said. “He was just a very great person.”
Edgewood Borough announced there will be a candlelight vigil in honor of Evans on Oct. 4 at 6 p.m. at Memorial Park.
The vigil will follow a “Community Assembly” at the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf at 4 p.m.