The Alta View Hospital hostage incident began September 20, 1991, when Richard Worthington, armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and sticks of dynamite arrived at Alta View Hospital in Sandy, UT, in an attempt to kill Dr. Glade Curtis, who had performed a tubal ligation on his wife.
Worthington entered the Hospital's Women's Center and took as hostages two nurses, a patient giving birth, her sister, the father, and two newborn babies. Curtis saw what was happening and hid in his office, where he called the police. When the police arrived, nurse Karla Roth attempted to wrestle Worthington's shotgun from his hands. As she ran away, Worthington shot her fatally in the back.
Worthington held the hostages for eighteen hours. He eventually surrendered and released the remaining hostages. Worthington was sentenced to thirty-five years in prison for the murder of Roth, and later committed suicide in his prison cell on November 11, 1993.
The incident was portrayed in the 1992 TV movie Deliver Them From Evil: The Taking of Alta View, starring Harry Hamlin and Teri Garr. On June 25, 2016, an episode of In an Instant's second season focused on survivors of the incident with reenactments entitled "Murder in the Maternity Ward."