Seeking and Finding Wholeness

I’ve been hearing suicide mentioned often in the news recently so I thought I grab a few recent news articles and compile them here.

Suicide Headlines:

Missing soldier from Fairfield commits suicide in Santa Cruz
SANTA CRUZ — An AWOL soldier committed suicide in a car parked at an ocean overlook on Friday afternoon, three days after he was reported missing from Fort Carson in Colorado.

U.S. Army officials had issued alerts asking for the public’s help in finding Pfc. Roy Brooks Mason Jr., a decorated Iraq War veteran whose hometown is Fairfield, but had no luck finding the 28-year-old.

“We knew that he was missing and we were looking for him,” said Fort Carson spokeswoman Brandy Gill. “We were concerned for him.”

Source: http://www.mercurynews.com/crime/ci_12432747
Post sees second suicide in 2 weeks
The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Thursday that a Fort Campbell soldier committed suicide Monday night on Dean Road, the second suspected suicide this month by a soldier.

MCSO spokesman Ted Denny did not identify the soldier, saying MCSO policy prohibits release of details about suicides. Fort Campbell said the cause of the soldier’s death is under investigation.

According to 911 records, a call was made just before 8:40 p.m. Monday night to dispatchers indicating a suicide in the 600 block of Dean Road.

Source: http://www.theleafchronicle.com/article/20090522/NEWS01/905220344

Triple killing a double murder-suicide
Authorities: Man killed wife and son before turning gun on himself

Neighbors in The Cedars neighborhood describe Billy and Jolyne Hardy as the typical all-American family.

Billy worked two jobs to provide for his wife and 3-year-old son, and Jolyne, who also held a full-time job, often was seen outside playing with the child, Bryce, and working in the yard.

“Anyone who knows Billy can tell you he was a hard worker and he loved his family,” said Reginald Autrey, neighbor and close friend of the couple. “They were nice people and always have been.”

Source: http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20090506/NEWS03/905060325/1002/NEWS

Dad sent a suicide text before killing his family
Adrian Dunne sent a suicide note via text message before killing his wife, two young daughters and then himself.

The misspelled message told exactly what was going to happen. “Ciara and Aidran are so very sorry. We nott going to Livepol. Instad we pick heaven. Please forgive”. (sic)

When gardai finally forced their way in the Dunne family home at Monageer in Co Wexford they found Leanne (4) and her sister Shania (3) suffocated and laid out toe-to-toe on the sofa with their dolls and covered by a duvet.

Their mother Ciara (26) was on the floor with a ligature around her neck and Adrian (29) had hanged himself in the hall.

The technicians who examined Adrian’s phone cannot explain why the message failed to reach its intended destination.

A State inquiry has found the tragic couple were driven by debt and despair. The couple owed about €34,400 to banks and credit unions. They did not even have a cooker

Source: http://www.herald.ie/national-news/dad-sent-a-suicide-text-before-killing-his-family-1737177.html

Despondent dads driven to kill loved ones

(CNN) — ln April, a Maryland man wrote six suicide notes expressing his love and sorrow for his family, and then shot his wife and three children, before killing himself with a shotgun.

Curt Wheat and his wife, Marie, married in 1971. After 32 years, Wheat shot his wife and then himself.

This month, a man killed his wife and two sons in their home near Tampa, Florida. Troy Bellar chased after his teenage son with a high-powered rifle, but the 13-year-old escaped. Bellar later shot himself.

In some of this year’s most disturbing cases of family violence, fathers have turned against their own flesh and blood — asphyxiating and beating teenagers, firing shots into sleeping children tucked in bed, slaying grandparents and shooting infants in diapers.

The killings are cruel inversions of nature where a father murders his entire family in an act called familicide. After the carnage, the question lingers: Why did they do it?

For decades, psychiatrists have been studying such cases to determine what mental issues trigger this behavior. A person who kills his family could have control issues that lead him to decide the fate of the children, spouse and pets, researchers said.

While mentally healthy people cannot make sense of killing someone they love, for people with mental illness, “it has to do with their distorted thinking and depression,” said Donna Cohen, a professor and head of the Violence and Injury Prevention Program at the University of South Florida.

The person with a mental illness views his wife and children as possessions, believing, “I have to keep this. This is mine,” Cohen said. “Nobody else is able to take care of them except me. If I can’t control this in my life, I’ll preserve it in death so that my world doesn’t change. It’s the psychiatric issues.”

Murder-suicide plots could brew in a person’s mind for months, even years.
Murder-Suicide Numbers

Out of 1,500 to 2,000 murder-suicides a year, the Violence and Injury Prevention Program at University of South Florida estimates

“For a period of time, the idea to commit mass murder takes hold of them and they can’t shake it,” said Louis Schlesinger, forensic psychology professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

If there is news about other familicides, the intense news coverage may cause others to lose their inhibition and commit the same type of crime.

“They think they’re saving their family and that they will be remembered with sympathy,” Schlesinger said.

Source: http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/19/murder.suicide.families/index.html

Body of man accused of killing child found in river

Authorities believe they have found the body of a man responsible for tossing his niece to her death in the Passaic River.

The body of 3-year-old Janiya Rivas was recovered from the murky waters near the Gregory Avenue Bridge, which connects the City of Passaic to the Borough of Wallington, at approximately 8:20 a.m. on April 25, according to Detective Capt. Tony Zanteno of the Passaic Police Department.

Juan Mendez, 21, took Rivas, his niece, from her Scher Place home in Passaic and drove off in his charcoal-gray Honda. Family members said Mendez, a FedEx employee, was using drugs for several days and acting erratically prior to his disappearance, according to Zanteno.

On May 1, The Passaic Police Department, Passaic County Sheriff’s Department and Wallington and Passaic Fire Departments were searching the river for Mendez’s body, as he had not been found following the incident. At approximately 10:50 a.m., a Passaic County Sheriff’s Department boat spotted a body on the banks of the Passaic River near River Drive, according to Zanteno. The medical examiner’s office performed an autopsy on the body to confirm if it was Mendez.

Source: http://www.southbergenite.com/NC/0/2561.html

Suicide leaves everyone asking why
In Selawik, 17-year-old’s death becomes the first of several

SELAWIK — One of his daughters screamed. Then one of his sons.

Willie Ballot launched out of bed and into the bathroom. There he found his oldest girl, 17-year-old Dorcas, hanging from the shower curtain rod.

He lifted her over his shoulder. His nephew helped pulled the belt from her neck.

“Put her down. Started doing CPR,” recalled Ballot, whose wife, Krystal, is the head health aide at the village clinic.

“But I could already tell her esophagus was not going to …

“She wasn’t coming back.”

The death of Dorcas Mildred Ballot on Dec. 1 began a three-week string of suicides and suicide attempts that quietly punched holes in families and villages across Northwest Alaska. And served as a reminder: After decades of planning and spending, training and talking, suicide continues to take the lives of rural Alaskans at a distorted, alarming pace.

Last year, 162 Alaskans killed themselves, according to preliminary numbers from the Alaska Bureau of Vital Statistics.

That’s the most ever recorded in one year in Alaska. The state suicide rate is roughly twice the national average and the rates are even higher — in some cases, much higher — in Alaska’s rural areas.

A week after Dorcas died, a 42-year-old mother in Selawik hanged herself. Alaska State Troopers were in town after that suicide when they learned that a 15-year-old boy had killed himself in nearby Noatak.

Young men in Kiana and Brevig Mission killed themselves too

Sources: http://www.adn.com/life/health/story/798383.html

Wash. state woman 1st death under new suicide law

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — Linda Fleming was diagnosed with terminal cancer and feared her last days would be filled with pain and ever-stronger doses of medication that would erode her mind.

The 66-year-old woman with late-stage pancreatic cancer wanted to be clear-headed at death, so she became the first person to kill herself under Washington state’s new assisted suicide law, known as “death with dignity.”

“I am a very spiritual person, and it was very important to me to be conscious, clear-minded and alert at the time of my death,” Fleming said in a statement released Friday. “The powerful pain medications were making it difficult to maintain the state of mind I wanted to have at my death. And I knew I would have to increase them.”

With family members, her physician and her dog at her side, Fleming took a deadly dose of prescription barbiturates and died Thursday night at her home in Sequim, Wash.

Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g0NuoNUMdWuL_AQUOMA-RuMRcpuAD98BQS9G0