news-record.com

RALEIGH (MCT) — Dr. Raymond D. Cook was one of the faces of a WakeMed advertising campaign for specialty physicians.

But over the weekend, the image of the plastic and reconstructive surgeon changed dramatically — from the smiling physician in the "Special Doctors, Special Care" ads to a red-eyed, 42-year-old man in a police mug shot.

Cook, a Raleigh resident, is accused of driving drunk and nearly twice as fast as the posted speed limit on Strickland Road on Friday night, causing a fatal collision that ended the life of Elena Bright Shapiro, 20, an aspiring professional ballerina from Winston-Salem.

The doctor faces charges of felony death by vehicle and driving while impaired. He is on administrative suspension at WakeMed, the hospital where he had operating privileges.

The WakeMed ad campaign that featured Cook has been canceled.

Cook, a 1997 graduate of the UNC-Chapel Hill medical school, was licensed by the N.C. Medical Board in 1999. He did some of his post-graduate training at Duke University before doing a fellowship with Richard and Edward Farrior Facial Plastics and Reconstructive Surgery in Tampa, Fla.

In 2003, he returned to North Carolina and an arrangement between his medical school alma mater and Wake Med. For an annual salary of $288,577, he has the title of assistant professor in UNC-CH's department of otolaryngology and head and neck surgery. But his teaching and clinical duties were at Wake Med, not the Chapel Hill campus.

Jean Fisher Brinkley, director of the N.C. Medical Board's division of public affairs, declined to say Monday whether the board had begun an investigation. Efforts to reach Cook on Monday were unsuccessful.

As flowers and other memorials were placed at the accident scene and grief-stricken people mourned the lost life of a young woman with a promising career in the arts, neighbors and colleagues of the accused declined to comment.

"It's terrible," a troubled Maria Norment said while surveying the place where Cook's Mercedes-Benz crashed into the Hyundai that Shapiro drove.

"He is a doctor," Norment said. "He is supposed to save lives, not take lives."

Police on Monday continued to try to piece together what led to the collision at 8:35 p.m. Friday.

Investigators say the Mercedes was traveling about 85 mph — 40 mph over the posted speed limit on Strickland Road in North Raleigh — when the cars collided. Court documents describe Cook as having "bloodshot" and "glassy" eyes, smelling of alcohol, swaying and having slurred speech shortly after the incident. The results of a blood alcohol test were not available Monday.

Roger W. Smith Jr., the Raleigh attorney representing Cook in the criminal cases, first met with his client Monday. The two were in court briefly in the morning for Cook's first appearance before a judge on the matters.

"What happened here is just an awful tragedy," Smith said later. "To say he's distraught is an understatement. He is 42 years old. He is married. He has a 7-year-old and a 5-year-old. He is devastated by what's happened."

This was not the first time Cook was charged with driving while impaired. In 1988, according to court records, Cook was accused of driving while impaired in Georgia, but no probable cause was found and the prosecution was abandoned.