Donald Trump has appointed a woman who accidentally shot and killed her father as the new US Surgeon General.
Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, 48, is expected to be sworn in as the nation’s “top doctor” within weeks of Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.
Glamorous Dr. Nesheiwat is famous in the US as a medical expert on Fox News and has often talked about how losing her father at a young age inspired her career in medicine.
But the New York Times revealed last night that at the age of 13, she accidentally shot and killed her father at the family home in Orlando, Florida.
According to a 1990 police report, she told officers she was looking for a pair of scissors and grabbed a box of fishing tackle on a shelf.
She told police: ‘I was in dad’s bedroom about 7.15am getting a pair of scissors. I opened the box of fishing tackle and the whole thing fell over.
‘Something fell out and there was a loud noise. I saw blood on my father’s ear.’
Ben Nesheiwat, 44, was pronounced dead the next day from a gunshot wound to the head from a .38-caliber pistol stored in the tackle box.
Donald Trump pictured on December 7 after meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron and attending the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris
Dr. Janette Nasheiwat accidentally shot and killed her father at the age of 13 in the family home in Orlando, Florida
A coroner ruled his death an “accidental shooting.”
In her memoir, Beyond The Stethoscope, Dr. Nesheiwat describes how the loss of her father inspired her to choose medicine as a career, but does not mention her role in his death.
She wrote: “When I was thirteen years old, I watched helplessly as my dear father died in an accident, with blood spurting everywhere. I couldn’t save his life. This was the beginning of my personal life journey to become a doctor.”
She credited her mother Hayat for raising her to be successful.
Trump’s choice of Dr. Nesheiwat is just the latest in a series of colorful choices for high office in his new administration.
He chose Karoline Leavitt, 27, as the youngest-ever White House press secretary and gay billionaire Scott Bessent as Treasury secretary.
The president-elect’s choice for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth produced a woman who alleged he sexually assaulted her in 2017, an accusation he denied and for which he was not charged.