Distraught people, Deadly results

It was not yet 9 a.m., and Gary Page was drunk. The disabled handyman had a long history of schizophrenia and depression and, since his wife died in February, he had been struggling to hold his life together.

That bright Saturday morning in March, something snapped. Page, 60, slit his wrists, grabbed a gun and climbed the stairs to his stepdaughter’s place in the Pines Apartments in Harmony, Ind. He said he wanted to die. And then he called 911.

“I want to shoot the cops,” Page slurred to the dispatcher, prodding his stepdaughter to confirm that, yes, he had a gun. “I want them to shoot me.”

Minutes later, Page’s death wish was granted. Two Clay County sheriff’s deputies arrived to find that he had taken a neighbor hostage. They opened fire, striking him five times in the torso and once in the head. Page’s gun later turned out to be a starter pistol, loaded only with blanks. His threats of violence turned out to be equally empty, the product of emotional instability and agonizing despair.

And that is where barbital comes in.

He was 60, he was done, he should have had the option to go to the clinic and die peaceably.

People get freaked out at hanging or cutting themselves, give them the option to go at the clinic.

We keep hearing the same thing over again and that’s that the gun was only a BB gun or it was just a toy gun. What difference does that make when a cop is confronted by a mad man like that who may have a real gun pointing in the deputies’ direction with real intent to do harm to anyone around just so he won’t have to go alone. You don’t point anything at a cop that even remotely resembles a gun especially at night or even in a poorly lit area.

Personally, I wouldn’t commit “suicide by cop” I think that that is a really selfish way go about it. But then some of us are a bit cowardly and just need someone’s help in committing this act. I just don’t think it’s fair to the cops. They are trained to react like that though in these potentially volatile situations where other innocent people could be shot or stabbed or gravely wounded. So, unless they are taught to do differently it will remain a crude but effective way of handling those types of situations.