NYPD psychiatrist shot husband to start life with new lover, lawsuit claims

Snippet from a report in the New York Post

An NYPD shrink — whose job is to screen new recruits — put a bullet in her husband’s head as he slept so she could start a new life with her married lover, the wounded spouse claims in a lawsuit.

Real estate developer Kenneth Dearden Jr. accused his wife, Emily, of shooting him execution-style with an antique derringer because she “had been having an on-and-off extramarital affair since at least early 2011.”

Her lover, a Texas man named Warren Roudebush, ended his own marriage shortly before the November 2013 shooting and was pressuring Emily to do the same “so that they could be together,” according to the court papers filed last week in White Plains.

“With [Kenneth] no longer in the picture, [Emily] could avoid a contentious divorce, keep the marital home and never admit the marriage infidelity to any family and friends,” the suit says.

No one has been charged in the shooting inside the sprawling, Spanish colonial-style home that Kenneth and Emily share with their two young daughters in a posh section of Yonkers.

Yonkers police Lt. Patrick McCormack called it a “complex case” and declined to comment on Kenneth’s allegations.

The bullet that struck Kenneth entered at the back of his neck, near the base of his skull, passed underneath his ear canal and lodged in his left cheek.

He survided the shooting following surgeries to remove the bullet and to repair a severed artery to his brain.

US soldier who shot five troops was 'broken' by counsellors

As seen in the Telegraph

Army Sgt. John M. Russell, 44, has been charged with murder and aggravated assault in the Baghdad shootings, which his father said took place about six weeks before the end of his third tour of duty in Iraq.

Wilburn Russell, 73, alleged his son had been treated poorly at the stress centre and had e-mailed his wife calling two recent days the worst in his life.

"I hate what that boy did," said Mr Russell, speaking in front of the two-story suburban home his son is buying with his wife. "He thought it was justified. That's never a solution."

Excerpts of his military record, obtained by The Associated Press, show Sgt. Russell previously did two one-year tours of duty in Iraq, one starting in April 2003 and another beginning November 2005. The stress of repeat and extended tours is considered a main contributor to mental health problems among troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His father said the soldier, an electronics technician, was at the stress centre to transition out of active duty. He said his son was undergoing stressful mental tests that he didn't understand were merely tests, "so they broke him."

"John has forfeited his life. Apparently, he said (to his wife), 'My life is over. To hell with it. I'm going to get even with 'em,"' he said.

"He lived for the military," Mr Russell said. "We're sorry for the families, too. It shouldn't have happened."

The soldier's son, John M. Russell II, said that he has communicated with his father by e-mail regularly. In the last message he received from him, April 25, his father sounded normal and planned to be back in Texas to visit in July.

"He's not a violent person," he said. "He's just a loving, caring guy.

He doesn't like to see anyone get hurt. For this to happen, it had to be something going on that the Army's not telling us about."

Related Articles

• US soldier shoots dead five comrades in Baghdad
• US soldier kills 5 troops in Iraq
• US soldier jailed for 'execution' murders in Iraq
• Iraq withdrawal: background to the war
• US army soldier sentenced to life in prison for murder of Iraqi prisoners
• US Army sergeant convicted of murdering four Iraqi detainees

Psychiatrist in Murder Suicide

A report from Beirut, Lebanon

A psychiatrist committed suicide Wednesday morning after shooting dead a father and his two daughters.

Jack Hreiki, a 42-year-old psychiatrist, shot a 26-year-old lawyer, Chantal Ghanem; her sister Cheryl, a 29-year-old accountant; and their father Ghassan, a 58-year-old engineer; in the town of Batroumin in the northern province of Koura.

The victims were on their way to work in Tripoli when they were shot with a pump-action shotgun.

Hreiki, whose fellow townsmen described as a "psychiatrist in need of a psychological assistance," then went home and committed suicide.

A security source told The Daily Star that Hreiki knew his victims, as he was in love with Chantal, who had rejected him, for three years.

The source said Hreiki waited for the Ghanem family to leave for work, and when he blocked their path carrying a shotgun, the father stepped out from the car in an attempt to dissuade him from shooting. Ghassan was targeted first.

Hreiki then shot and killed the man's two daughters, who had witnessed the first shooting from the car.

Hreiki had repeatedly threatened Chantal, the sources said, and the Ghanem family had alerted the Internal Security Forces.

The homicide is the third this month [...]

Northern Illinois University Murders Due to "Chemical Imbalances" from Psychiatric Drugs.

Article by Fred Baughman, Jr. M.D. Neurologist/Child Neurologist, as found on OpEd News. Of course, it is our own opinionthat the Northern Illinois University murders were caused by "chemical imbalances" due to the use of psychiatric drugs.

Regarding the Northern Illinois University shooter, Steven P. Kazmierczak, The New York Times (Benedict Carey, 2/19/08, A20) remarks “…doctors say it is almost impossible to tell whether the spasms of violence stem in part from the drug reactions or the underlying illnesses.”

A girlfriend said Kazmierczac, took Prozac to battle anxiety and compulsive behavior. While psychiatry (psychology too) and the pharmaceutical industry want anxiety, depression, elation impulsiveness, poor conduct, trouble with math, reading, writing, etc., portrayed as brain abnormalities/diseases/disorders/syndromes, so as to be able to portray their drugs as “medications” and “treatments” there is no such thing as an demonstrable physical abnormality/disease in all of psychiatry.

Diseases of the brain, MS, ALS—Lou Gehrig’s disease, stroke, meningitis, etc., are the province of neurology, my specialty. This was assured in 1948 when the two specialties were formally split with “neuropsychiatry” becoming the separate, new specialties, “psychiatry” and “neurology.” This means that the drugs/exogenous chemicals invariably prescribed by psychiatrists (and throughout mental health, by all sorts of doctors) are toxins/poisons, the first and only demonstrable abnormality/disease that they have.

But today, patients are invariably lied to—told, for purposes of informed consent, that they have an illness/sickness/chemical imbalance. This gains their consent. Whether it is true, honest, informed consent or not the psychiatry-pharmaceutical cartel doesn’t care. There is little doubt that without the “chemical imbalance” lie the epidemic psychiatric drug poisoning would be a small fraction of what it is today.

At a 1970 Congressional hearing on the drugging of school children, that at which hyperactivity was first called a brain disease, Dr John D. Griffith, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, testified: “I would like to point out that every drug, however innocuous, has some degree of toxicity. A drug, therefore, is a type of poison and its poisonous qualities must be carefully weighed against its therapeutic usefulness.”

Such a scientific, honest weighing of the risks vs. the benefits of psychiatric medications is virtually never carried out today because the psychiatric diagnosis, never a “chemical imbalance”/disease, is always portrayed as one, always needing, even requiring “treatment” with a “chemical balancer”—pill.

Think for a moment of the tens of thousands of children court-ordered to take psychiatric drugs for diagnoses such as ADHD, conduct and oppositonal-defiant disorders, lest their parents, without trial, be pronounced “medically negligent” and threatened with the loss of custody of the child—their child. Their child who’s emotional life they are no longer allowed to direct. This is what we have come to in the USA!

As in the University of Northern Illinois case, almost all of the grade school, high school, and college shooters have been psychiatric patients with psychiatric “diseases” (not real diseases) on psychiatric drugs (real exogenous chemical compounds, real brain- and body-altering poisons, real diseases). Nor is the issue of whether they still have the poison in their system or not critical. All psychiatric drugs damage the previously normal brain and body.

This is how they alter the subjective symptoms for which they are “treatment.” Even if stopped they have damaged and thus altered the previously normal individual. Eric Harris, one of the two Columbine shooters had been on Zoloft, also Prozac-like. There is no such thing as the “chemical imbalance” portrayed in the Zoloft ad. There is no such thing as the balancing of that “chemical imbalance” as portrayed in the Zoloft ad. And yet the FDA, as much a part of the pharmaceutical industry as psychiatry, lets them tell us these lies. Harris was denied enlistment in the armed forces. They knew something the public did not.

Health care providers in Sweden are now required to report all suicides committed up to four weeks after their last health care visit. 367 suicides were thus-reported for the year 2006. More than 80 percent of persons committing suicide had been “treated” with psychiatric drugs. In over 50 percent of cases the persons were on antidepressants, most of them Prozac-like, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). More than 60 cases had been on antipsychotic/neuroleptic. This information had been concealed by psychiatric officials at Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare. Does this not blow the myths of antidepressants and neuroleptics as suicide-preventive drugs to pieces?

What’s more: these drugs—SSRIs and neuroleptic/antipsychotics alike, are being given to infants toddlers and children in the US, and are being pushed hard by the psychiatry-pharmaceutical cartel around the world. Think of it: over 80 percent of persons killing themselves on treatment with psychiatric drugs.

A certain number of persons killing themselves can be expected to be suffering from drug induced akathisia – an extreme inner restlessness, a feeling of having to creep out of ones skin, a completely unbearable condition. It is created by the psychiatric drugs, not by any “underlying disease”—there is no such thing as an actual disease in psychiatry, at least, not before the “treatment” poisoning—the first and only disease. (thanks to Janne Larsson, investigative journalist, Sweden).

In December, 1994, Professor David Healy interviewed Jonathan Cole , Director of Psychopharmacology Research at the National Institute of Mental Health. Healy asked: “What about a group of patients who may get worse on it Prozac?

Cole responded: Yes. I’m one of the authors of the suicide paper. Yes, I have seen people, at least a handful, that clearly got more agitated and got weird thoughts and suicidal drive. Tony Rothschild…found three people who had jumped off something while on fluoxetine, who didn’t kill themselves, and agreed to take it again. He re-created the same desperate driven quality with fluoxetine (Prozac).

Cole: One patient…was so distressed by a thought telling her to kill herself over and over again, …I told her to take some Ativan and go to sleep and she did and within 36 hours it had passed. At the end of it she said ‘gee, I’ve been depressed for 21 years, and suicidal a lot but that was ridiculous.’ Lilly (manufacturer of Prozac) doesn’t believe it…Plus about 1-2% of the people on fluoxetine…called up and said I’ve got suicidal ideas that I haven’t had before and another 1-2% phoned up and said I’ve got crazy ideas that I hadn’t had before.

Today in the US we have been so taken in by the “chemical imbalance”/ “chemical balancer” lie of the psycho-pharm cartel that 20% of school children are on one or more psychiatric drug, 60-70% of children in foster care (who cannot defend themselves ) and a like number of those in juvenile and adult penal institutions.

At the same time we have organized psychiatry asking us to believe that half of all of us in the US will one day be afflicted with a “serious mental disorder” (read chemical imbalance) and that, of course we will need one or more “chemical balancers”/drugs.

[...]

When normal people are lied to, told they have a "disease" to make "patients" of them, their right to informed consent has been abrogated and they no longer live in a democracy. When, pursuant to that lie, they are drugged, we have not "treatment" but poisoning. This is the greatest health care fraud in modern medical history.

Illinois gunman 'stopped his medication'

The Furious Seasons weblog has, as usual, some excellent commentary

As noted in the Telegram, and elsewhere.

Officials have said that the man who killed five students and injured many more before turning the gun on himself at Northern Illinois University had become erratic in the past two weeks after stopping his medication.

Campus police chief Donald Grady said that the motive of 27-year-old Stephen Kazmierczak motive was not known and that there were no indications that he had a relationship with any of his victims.

[...]

Mr Grady refused to name the medication Kazmierczak had been taking, but said that he was "a fairly normal, undistressed person".

"There were no red flags," he said. "He was an outstanding student".

ABC News has this information:

Though Kazmierczak seemed friendly and normal, he had a troubled past. After high school, Kazmierczak's parents sent him to Thresholds-Mary Hill House, a psychiatric treatment center for teens, where he lived for a year while getting therapy and medication for what was described as "unruly" behavior.

Louise Gbadamashi, a former employee at the Chicago treatment center, told the Associated Press that he used to cut himself, and had resisted taking his medications. "He never wanted to identify with being mentally ill," she said. "That was part of the problem."

Apparently in recent weeks Kazmierczak's problems were re-emerging. "We have spoke to people who are close to him and apparently he had been taking medication. He had stopped taking those medications and had become somewhat erratic in the last couple of weeks," said NIU Police Chief, Donald Grady.

The chief declined to specify the type of medication the gunman was on.

We wonder why the medications the gunman was on were not identified. It seems like there may have been a PR push to get the release of this information delayed as a general policy, so that that the drugs in questions would not be so strongly tied to the killing. We need to know which drugs are responsible for these deaths.

We note the history involving a psychiatric treatment for "troubled teens". These have been controversial in the past, especially those which are best labeled Psychiatric Boot Camps for Breaking Minds and Spirits, as noted in our earlier stories:

• Lawsuits Against Child Abuse in Utah Based Troubled Teen Homes
• Congress Holds First Hearing on Abuse in Unregulated 'Troubled Teen' Industry, Exposing Quackery and Torture Across America
• Child Abuse for Profit
• Utah wilderness therapy deaths

The Thresholds Mary Hill House does not seem to be in this class of facility, but there is precious little information available online about it. There have been recent scandals at other Illinois facilities.

The Thresholds chain of psychiatric facilities are oldest and largest of their type in Illinois. We are sure they will be getting many questions from investigators and reporters.

We also note the following items located at the SSRI STORIES website documenting the connection of Psychiatric Drugs such as antidepressants and other SSRIs to school shootings, among other things.

Sadly, we expect this this will be a similar case. Between the possible combination of the two factors, this could be revealed as an especially grim case.

School Shooting	Anafranil Antidepressant	May 20, 1988	Illinois	**29 Year Old WOMAN Kills One Child: Wounds Five: Kills Self
School Shooting	Prozac Antidepressant	January 30, 1992	Michigan	**School Teacher Shoots Kills His Superintendent at School
School Shooting	Antidepressants	September 20, 1992	Texas	**Man, Angry Over Daughter's Report Card, Shoots 14 Rounds inside Elementary School
School Shooting	Zoloft Antidepressant	October 12, 1995	South Carolina	**15 Year Old Shoots Two Teachers, Killing One: Then Kills Himself
School Stand-Off	Zoloft Antidepressant	April 13, 1998	Idaho	**14 Year Old in School Holds Police At Bay: Fires Shots
School Shooting	Prozac Antidepressant Withdrawal	May 21, 1998	Oregon	**Four Dead: Twenty Injured
School Shooting Threat	Antidepressant	April 16, 1999	Idaho	**Teen Fires Gun in School
School Shooting	Luvox/Zoloft Antidepressants	April 20, 1999	Colorado	**COLUMBINE: 15 Dead: 24 Wounded
School Threats	Prozac	October 19, 1999	Florida	16 Year Old Threatens Classmates With Knife Fake Explosives
School Shooting	Paxil Antidepressant	March 10, 2001	Pennsylvania	**14 Year Old GIRL Shoots Wounds Classmate at Catholic School
School Shooting	Celexa Effexor Antidepressant	April 19, 2001	California	**Teen Shoots at Classmates in School
School Shooting	Antidepressant?	January 17, 2002	Virginia	**Possible SSRI Withdrawal Mania: 3 Dead at Law School
School Shooting Threat	Antidepressant	May 31, 2003	Michigan	**Teen Threatens School Shooting: Charge is Terrorism
School Shooting	Paxil Antidepressant	February 9, 2004	New York	**Student Shoots Teacher in Leg at School
School Shooting Threat	Med for Depression*	October 19, 2004	New Jersey	**Over-Medicated Teen Brings Loaded Handguns to School
School Violence	Antidepressants	February 9, 2005	Pennsylvania	**Teen Uses Knife to Attack Fellow Classmate
School Shooting	Prozac Antidepressant	March 24, 2005	Minnesota	**10 Dead: 7 Wounded: Dosage Increased One Week before Rampage
School/Assault	Zoloft Antidepressant	February 15, 2006	Tennessee	**Teen Attacks Teacher at School
School Shooting	Celexa Antidepressant	August 30, 2006	North Carolina	**Teen Shoots at Two Students: Kills his Father: Celexa Found Among his Personal Effects
School Shooting	Med for Depression?	September 19, 2006	Canada	**Young Man Kills 1 Self : Injures 19: Being Teated for Depression
School Shooting	Antidepressant	September 30, 2006	Colorado	**Man Assaults Girls: Kills One Self
School Shooting	Antidepressant?	April 18, 2007	Virginia	**Possible SSRI Use: 33 Dead at Virginia Tech
School Threat	Antidepressants	April 23, 2007	Mississippi	**College Student Arrested for Making School Threat Over Internet
School Threat	Wellbutrin Antidepressant	April 24, 2007	Tennessee	**Young Boy, 12, Threatens to Shoot Others at School
School Suspension	Lexapro	July 28, 2007	Arkansas	Student Has 11 Incidents with Police During his 16 Months on Lexapro
School Shooting	Antidepressant Withdrawal?	October 12, 2007	Ohio	**14 Year Old School Shooter Possibly on Antidepressants or In Withdrawal
School Shooting	Antidepressants	November 7, 2007	Finland	**Student Shoots 8: Wounds 10: Kills Self: High School in Finland
School Shooting	Medication Withdrawal	February 15, 2008	Illinois	** 6 Dead: 15 Wounded: Perpetrator Was in Withdrawal from Med Acting Erratically

Psychiatric drugs in the life of the Nebraska mall sniper Robert Hawkins

From an interview on ABC News Good Morning Program:

Rodriguez said her son's life had been a challenge from the start. She divorced Hawkins' father when the boy was 3-years-old, she said, and by 5 he was taking prescription Ritalin and Zoloft. She said she watched, feeling helpless the way a parent can, as raw anger took root inside her son.

First there were fights at school, she said. Then he was caught smoking cigarettes. Then marijuana.

He became a ward of the state in 2002 after apparently threatening his stepmother. He was moved through facilities and foster homes for several years, until he was released in 2005. Two weeks before the shooting rampage, Hawkins parted ways with his girlfriend.

Rodriguez said she sympathizes deeply with the families of her son's victims.

There is no reason to suppose that these deadly drugs did not continue while Hawkins was in state custody. Or that the known side effects of these drugs did not have a deadly impact.

Regarding the two Shootings in Colorado

Currents reports are suggestive that Matthew Murray was influenced by psychiatric medication, as is too common this day in many public shootings:

At Abeyta's side was Peter Warren, the school's director. Warren said that when Murray came to the school early Sunday asking to stay the night, staff members did not recognize him.After Murray was identified by police, the school realized he had attended its training program in 2002. The Arvada school is a branch of an international missionary program that trains thousands annually.

Warren said school officials refused to assign Murray to a mission because of an unspecified health problem that could make such work unsafe. Warren would not elaborate, and he and Abeyta left without taking questions.

But this is not nearly enough evidence to say it was so, despite the odds in favor of such a conclusion. And to be fair, a person can be on unbalanced mind for reasons not having to do with psychiatric drugs. Uncommon, but it happens.

In court papers, police said Murray had written threatening letters to the school and spent many hours a day on the Internet as a computer student, the Gazette of Colorado Springs reported. [...] It also was unclear why Murray traveled the roughly 75 miles from the missionary school in Arvada to New Life Church, which has a Youth With a Mission branch office. New Life achieved notoriety last year when its founder, Ted Haggard, was accused by a former gay prostitute of trading drugs and sex.

Information is unclear at this time, and we await further reports.

Omaha Mall Shooter reported on Anti-Depressants

From CBS46 KETV - it seems that the Omaha Nebraska Mall shooter Robert Hawkins had been on anti-depressants prior to the shooting. This just is another bit of anecdotal evidence on the dangerous side effects of anti-depressants.

Shortly after the shooting, Hawkins' mother walked into its office with a note that "could be interpreted as suicidal," the sheriff's office said.

KETV reported that the note left with the Sarpy sheriff's office said Hawkins wanted to "go out in style."

It also reportedly said Hawkins was "going to go out and be famous."

Yost said Sarpy County is working with Omaha police.

A friend of Hawkins told KETV that Hawkins had been on antidepressants, staying with friends and bouncing from job to job.

[...]

Another friend, Andrew Bigler, said that Hawkins was "an awesome kid" and that he loved him like a brother.

"Robbie was anything but a terrorist," he said, and said he didn't think Hawkins was filled with anger, just that he was an average teenager with average problems.

Other friends told KETV that Hawkins was a funny person who liked to make others laugh.

[...]

Rumors that Omaha Shooter Robert Hawkins Had Been "Treated" For ADHD, Depression

A report has surfaced that Omaha shooter Robert Hawkins had been treated for ADHD and Depression. You can see the full report online here. Hard data that psych drugs were involved has not surfaced in the mainstream media. While the possibility of the presence of psych drugs is quite believable, and even predictable, I cannot say that it is true without some confirmation. There are reports that he had a troubled past, having spent many years shuffling between a variety of homes and facilities for troubled children:

The young man who killed eight people and committed suicide in a shooting rampage at a department store spent four years in a series of treatment centers, group homes and foster care after threatening to kill his stepmother in 2002.

Finally, in August 2006, social workers, the courts and his father all agreed: It was time for Robert Hawkins to be released — nine months before he turned 19 and would have been required to leave anyway.

The group homes and treatment centers were for youths with substance abuse, mental or behavioral problems.

Altogether, the state spent about $265,000 on Hawkins, officials said.

On Thursday, while some of those who knew Hawkins called the massacre Wednesday at a busy Omaha mall unexpected, not everyone was surprised.

“He should have gotten help, but I think he needed someone to help him and needed someone to be there when in the past he’s said he wanted to kill himself,” said Karissa Fox, who said she knew Hawkins through a friend. “Someone should have listened to him.”

Todd Landry, state director of children and family services, said court records do not show precisely why Hawkins was released. But he said if Hawkins should not have been set free, someone would have raised a red flag.

“It is my opinion, it was not a failure of the system to provide appropriate services,” Landry said. “If that was an issue, any of the participants in the case would have brought that forward.”

Given the body count, we disagree.

Toxicology report released for psychiatrist in murder suicide case.

From the Santa Maria Times

A San Luis Obispo psychiatrist who shot and killed his wife and 7-year-old daughter and then turned the gun on himself had no evidence of drugs or alcohol in his system at the time of the killings, according to the San Luis Obispo Police Department.

Complete toxicology reports released from the County Coroner’s Office on Tuesday indicate there were no drugs or alcohol found in John Rivard’s blood, police said.

Police found John Michael “Mike” Rivard, 48, Barbara Rivard, 44, and their daughter Olivia Rivard, 7, dead in their home in the 1700 block of Frambuesa Drive in San Luis Obispo shortly after 7 a.m. Oct. 3. All three died from gunshot wounds.

An investigation revealed that Rivard beat his wife with a metal flashlight before shooting her once in the head, after she argued with the couple’s daughter, Olivia.

Rivard also shot Olivia once in the head and then turned the gun on himself.

The couple’s two other children, a 5-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy, were found unharmed inside the Rivard home.

San Luis Obispo Police Reveal Psychiatrist Murder-Suicide Mystery

As reported on MSNBC, with reactions from the neighbors here.

Many more details are available online via the San Luis Obispo Tribune

On October 3rd, Psychiatrist Dr. John Michael Rivard called 9-1-1 from his home on Frambuesa Drive in San Luis Obispo.

He fatally shot himself while on the phone with dispatchers.

When officers arrived, they found Rivard, his wife Barbara and their 7-year-old daughter Olivia all shot to death.

The couple's two younger children were found unharmed.

Today [Thursday, Oct 18], police confirmed what actually happened inside the home.

"Rivard stated that there had been a homicide-suicide in the home and that he had killed his wife Barbara after there had been an altercation between Barbara and their daughter Olivia," said San Luis Obispo Police Chief Deborah Linden.

Barbara was found dead on the floor in Olivia's bedroom. Police say they found no physical indication of a fight between Barbara and Olivia.

"John Michael Rivard severely beat his wife Barbara with a metal flashlight on her head while Barbara was in Olivia's bedroom. Sometime after that he shot Barbara and used a pillow to muffle the sound. After killing Barbara, John Rivard shot Olivia while she was lying in Rivard's bed," said Chief Linden.

John Michael Rivard was found still clutching the .357 revolver used in the killings and his cell phone.

Investigators used his statements to dispatchers and forensic evidence to determine the sequence of the deaths.

"The typical things that were examined were the blood evidence, blood spatter, where was it, the gun itself," said Chief Linden.

While police believe they have put together the puzzle of who pulled the trigger, there are a few things that remain a mystery.

"There are certainly facts that we don't know that we can't determine and I think in this investigation that we'll never know why he did this or what his motivation was," said Chief Linden.

The two Rivard children found alive inside the home are being cared for by family members.

Police say they have an incredible support system and are handling the tragedy as well as can be expected.

Suspected gunman in SuccessTech Academy school shooting was on psychiatric drugs

The SuccessTech Academy shooting is a school shooting that took place on October 10, 2007 at SuccessTech high school in Cleveland, Ohio. The perpetrator, Asa H. Coon, wounded at least four people, including two teachers and two students; another student was injured fleeing from the school. Coon had been suspended on Monday, October 8, after fighting with another student during a disagreement, and returned on Wednesday, October 10, with two guns and began shooting. Coon reportedly then committed suicide. (via Wikipedia)

Peter Breggin, M.D., documents cases of irreversible psychosis from short stints on certain drugs.

Ann Tracy, Ph.D., Executive Director of www.drugawareness.org has received reports of antidepressant-induced psychosis lasting for five years before complete recovery was achieved.

As reported by WKYC, via the SSRI Stories website.

Many are asking what caused the suspected gunman in the SuccessTech Academy shooting to snap.

We are learning new details about Asa Coon's troubled background.

The anger that touched off the tragedy began in the heart and mind of Asa Coon at a very young age.

"Are there a lot of Asa's out there? There probably are," Cuyahoga County Children's Services Director Jim McCafferty
said.

McCafferty says between 1998 and 2002 the county agency twice investigated the Coon family for neglect and once for physical abuse.

Asa had mysterious burns on his arm, McCafferty says his older brother, Stephen, may have been to blame.

"As these boys got older and more out of control one has to wonder how much control was in their lives," McCafferty said.

Stephen Coon has a history of committing violent crimes including assault, weapons and drug charges.

One day after the shooting, Cleveland Police arrested Stephen outside his home on an outstanding warrant.

"His environment was living with an older brother who has a long violent history of criminal activity not only in juvenile court and adult court," Chief Juvenile Prosecutor Carmen Naso said.

In January 2006 Asa Coon was convicted of domestic violence.

At the age of 12 he attempted suicide. Asa was prescribed antidepressants and pills for attention deficit disorder.

After a psychiatric evaluation specialists suspected he suffered from a bipolar disorder and recommended psychotropic drugs.

"He was a troubled youth. In January of 2006 that resulted in violence against his own mother and that should have told us something," Naso said.

Whatever it told healthcare professionals, the juvenile and child welfare systems, it was not enough to prevent this from happening.

Police say they've gone to the Coon household five times since 2006.

They were responding to complaints of domestic violence, assault and some property crimes.

Texas cases of mothers accused of killing kids

While we have previously covered cases from Texas, amd most recenty the sad case of Alysha Green, we came across the following news story regarding a series of mothers who had turned on their children. It is our personal opinion and suspicion that closer inspection will reveal that these poor people were each plagued by the side effects of psychiatric drugs, or the horrors of the withdrawal symptoms of these drugs. As seen here.

In the latest Texas case of a mother who apparently turned on her children, Alysha Green is accused of dousing her three daughters with gasoline and setting them on fire last weekend. She faces a capital murder charge after her 3-year-old died, and she has been charged with two counts of serious injury to a child as her 5- and 7-year-old daughters remain hospitalized.

Here are some high-profile cases of Texas mothers who killed their children:

• Andrea Yates drowned her five children, ages 6 months to 7 years, in the bathtub of their Houston-area home in 2001.
  
  
• Dee Etta Perez shot her 10- and 9-year-old sons and 4-year-old daughter and wounded her estranged husband before killing herself in her Hudson Oaks home in 2002.
  
  
• Deanna Laney beat her 8- and 6-year-old sons to death with rocks and injured her 14-month-old son in East Texas in 2003.
  
  
• Lisa Ann Diaz drowned her 5- and 3-year-old daughters in a Plano bathtub in 2003.
  
  
• Dena Schlosser severed her 10-month-old daughter's arms with a kitchen knife in 2004 at the family's Plano apartment near Dallas.
  
  
• Gilberta Estrada hanged herself and her four children — ages 8 months to 5 years — in their Hudson Oaks mobile home in May. Only the youngest survived.
  
  
• Andrea Roberts shot her husband and 11- and 7-year-old children to death before killing herself last month in the Dallas suburb of Flower Mound.

As noted by the SSRI Stories Website regarding Alysha Green, and which may very well be true of the others ...

If this tragic case follows the usual scenario, then Alysha Green was given an antidepressant, became manic and/or psychotic, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and then given an antipsychotic, a mood stabilizer, an antidepressant and an anti-anxiety medication.

Withdrawal from any one of these toxic substances can be a nightmare, so withdrawal from this kind of drug cocktail is beyond description. Almost 3% of the population in the U.S. is now diagnosed with bipolar disorder [Pharmaceutical Business Review: Nov. 21, 2006]. Consequently, the dangers to the public of the toxic drug cocktail for bipolar disorder, both while on it and while withdrawing from it, are enormous

Paxil implicated in another murder

From the Nevada County Local News section of the Union newspaper

The murder trial of Richard Williams, accused of killing his estranged wife with a nail gun, is postponed as the court addresses several motions - including the defense attorney's push to exclude testimony from Williams' jail mates, as well as a possible conflict of interest.

According to court records, defense attorney Stephen Munkelt wants to prevent prosecutors from calling former Grass Valley residents Frank Zupan and Larry Watson to the stand during the trial.

For the prosecutors, the testimony of Zupan and Watson is expected to cast doubt on Williams' "unconsciousness" defense: He allegedly killed his wife and attempted to kill himself as a result of withdrawal from the anti-depressant drug Paxil, according to court records.

[...]

Cho, Va. Tech and System Failure

Various comments on the Washington Post about the report regarding the investigating the shooting at Virginia Tech.

Vunderlutz wrote that, "The brunt of the criticism should be directed at the lack of follow-through by the courts and the mental health professionals. But, all in all, this was a system failure and the blame, guilt and remorse are shared among many."

And jamalnasir_2000 said, "...this article makes it seem like VA Tech should have had a anti crime force of its own... This school just ended up being a victim of a screwed up/insane person. That can happen anywhere....example Columbine."

UncleWillie concurred, saying that "...the actions of a 1-in-a-million nut like this one remains unpredictable. As a result thousands will be subjected to more stringent rules and procedures which erode our freedoms and will fail to circumvent anything."

terryeo said "It is psychiatry that should be criticized...Treating someone so they kill people is simply not good medical practice... This idea of a psychiatrist using our tax dollars, treating Cho, prescribing Cho psychotropic drugs, and then not being held accountable for Cho's behaviour is beyond good sense."

RustNeverSleeps said, "Va Tech did nothing wrong! College students believe they are invincible and would not have listened to any warnings to stay inside behind locked doors? This commission was another waste of taxpayer dollars."

Last word goes to DardenCavalcade1, who wrote, "In ALL of these tragedies, institutional failures abound and are a principle contributing cause... Commonwealth institutions failed serially and repeatedly to do their damn jobs. Virginia government constantly fails to exercise due diligence in governance: drivers licensing of the 9/11 terrorists, gun laws that provide a statistically significant number of firearms to professional criminals in the Atlantic states, failure to build and repair critical infrastructures, failure to educate, and now the slaughter at Virginia Tech."

The discontent out there is obvious

Another school shooting where psych drugs are involved

As seen here

A mental examination has been ordered for a teenager accused of shooting a classmate to death at Foss High School.

At the request of Pierce County prosecutors, Superior Court Judge Ronald E. Culpepper directed on Friday that Douglas S. Chanthabouly, 18, charged with first-degree murder in the attack on Samnang Kok, undergo a 15-day exam at Western State Hospital.

Kok was slain in a school hallway on Jan. 3. Police have written that there was some kind of dispute between the two teenagers.

Chanthabouly has pleaded innocent, and prosecutors told the judge that his lawyers have given notice of intent to present a mental health defense. Defense lawyer John David Chin said he had arranged for a private psychiatrist to evaluate the teenager.

According to court filings, Chanthabouly told a jail mental health expert in January that he is schizophrenic, takes anti-psychotic medication and was once admitted to a psychiatric hospital after attempting suicide.

What Risks are Acceptable Risks?

On April 16th, Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people, and wounded many more, in a shooting spree termed the "Virginia Tech massacre." The massacre took place on April 16, 2007 on the campus of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg, Virginia, just four days before the eighth anniversary of the Columbine shooting. Cho committed suicide after law enforcement officers breached the doors of the academic building where he shot most of his victims, including faculty and students.

On April 17th, in an example of incredibly poor timing, Scientific American and other science news outlets carried a news item about a study that came to the conclusion that the benefits of antidepressants outweighed the risks.

As news reports indicate that Cho was on psychiatric medications before the shooting, This leads us to the natural question:

What risks are acceptable risks? Surely the authors of the study and the outlets that reported it do not mean that the occasional school massacre is acceptable. It is apparent that school shootings and other similar incidents were not on the radar of those who wrote the student.

The possibility that they knew, and did not take the risk seriously is too horrifying to contemplate.

But if true, then maybe it is time to storm the castle Frankenstein and bring the doctors who made this monster to justice.

On May 3rd, the FDA issued an updated requirement for the black box warning that appears on the packaging of antidepressants.

The question of the supposed benefits vs side effects of the drugs is another matter entirely.

The Actual Trigger at Virginia Tech

We know that the side effects of many psychiatric drugs include obsessive thoughts involving suicide, death, and killing others. Yet often there is some actual thing that triggers the actual event. In this case, a columnist for the New York post may have stumbled on the answer

The following are facts. Make of them what you choose.

On Sunday night, April 15th, 12 hours before Cho Seung-Hui began his killing spree on the Virginia Tech campus, "Dateline NBC" devoted its entire show to telling the story of psychotic murderer Robert Hyde.

Hyde was a bright young man from Albuquerque who began to suffer a steady mental deterioration until, one day, in 2005, at different locations, he shot and killed five people.

Beyond the murders, the NBC show stressed that Hyde was a time bomb who was released from police custody and hospital care despite frightening episodes and warnings from many, including his family, that eventually there would be hell to pay, that eventually he would kill.

Hyde's story, it turned out, was roughly the same as Cho's life story, except for the killing part. Cho hadn't killed anyone, not yet.

The morning after NBC's show aired, Cho, described by schoolmates as an all-night TV watcher, shot and killed two people.

He then returned to his dormitory to mail a parcel to NBC. It included a note from Cho that began, "You forced me into a corner."

Then he traveled to a different section of the Virginia Tech campus, where he shot and murdered 30 more people.

Surely, Cho's diseased mind was prepped and primed to commit mass murder, at some point. But did NBC's show, the night before, serve as his prompt? In his afflicted state, did that "Dateline" installment push him over the edge? It's unlikely that we'll ever know.

Yet, the numerous similarities between the Hyde and Cho stories are inescapable. So is the timing. Cho's rampage began fewer than 12 hours after NBC's episode about Hyde ended. And Cho interrupted his rampage only to send NBC a you-pushed-me-to-do-this missive.

But even if it's all just a matter of bizarre, chilling coincidences, those coincidences seem too great to ignore or dismiss. They're worthy of your attention.

It looks like Cho Seung-Hui had been meticulously planning his crime for months, but had not yet done anything. The TV story led him to a paranoid fantasy that the show was covertly exposing his plans, and that they were talking about him. Instead of surrendering his weapons, he surrendered to the voices in his head. The voices that were there thanks to the side effects of the drugs he had been on.

What Caused Columbine?

A column from 1999 on the causes of Columbine, by Phyllis Schlafly. Regardless of what you think about her politics, there are several details that came out that are exposed here, and which are worth noting. She doesn't blame it on the liberals, BTW.

Everybody's looking for the causes of the terrible tragedy at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, and for ways to prevent such horrible happenings in the future. Hillary Clinton has volunteered her intuition that "part of growing up is learning how to control one's impulses."

Putting aside the point that most of us don't have impulses to go on a killing rampage, who is going to teach kids to control their impulses? Certainly not the "village" (i.e., the government or government schools), which Mrs. Clinton believes should have prime responsibility for raising children.

For the past 25 years, the prevailing dogma in public school teaching has been Values Clarification (as in the tremendously influential 1972 book of the same name by Sidney Simon). That means teaching students to reject "the old moral and ethical standards" and instead create "their own value system."

Values Clarification teaches that, since there are absolutely no absolutes, students can make their own decisions about behavior instead of looking to God, the Ten Commandments, parents, church, or other authority that teaches that behavior should conform to traditional morality. Indeed, Eric Harris created his "own value system."

Modern public school teaching exalts "tolerance" of other people's behavior as the highest virtue, and "self-esteem" as education's principal objective. We are forbidden to be "judgmental" about the behavior of others when they indulge in their impulses instead of controlling them.

As best described by the late Senator (and former university president) Sam Hayakawa, the public schools adopted "an educational heresy . . . that rejects the idea of education as the acquisition of knowledge and skills . . . and regards the fundamental task in education as therapy." These "therapy" courses opened the floodgates to all sort sorts of psychological courses, one of the weirdest of which was Death and Dying.

In 1987 Colorado Eagle Forum produced a two-hour video in which student Tara Backer spoke at length about the relentless focus on death, dying and suicide in her sophomore classes at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. She and several of her classmates attempted suicide as a result of this depressing teaching, and it took them many months to recover from the experience.

Tara was subsequently interviewed for an ABC 20/20 program in 1988, where she said, "I had thought about [suicide] as a possible option for a lot of years, but I never would have gone through with it, never, because I wasn't brave enough. The things that we learned in the class taught us how to be brave enough to face death."

She added, "We talked about what we wanted to look like in our caskets." ABC's Tom Jarriel concluded the segment by asking if these courses "suggest death as an answer to adolescent problems."

The 20/20 segment showed morbid visuals of student visits to cemeteries, embalming labs, and crematoriums, and told about picking some bones out of the ashes. It was clear that Tom Jarriel and Hugh Downs thought that death ed was bizarre.

An investigative piece in Atlantic Monthly the same year confirmed that death and dying courses are given in "thousands of schools," often sneaked into health, social studies, literature or home-economics courses without parents' knowledge. The magazine described how these courses include requiring students to write their own obituaries, epitaphs, wills, or suicide notes, and to decide how they would prefer to die, have their body disposed of, and who they want for pallbearers.

Unfortunately, parents in Illinois, Michigan and Florida have attributed their sons' suicides to public school courses in death, dying, or suicide.

Death ed is apparently still taught at Columbine. One student told the Associated Press that shooter Eric Harris was asked to write out his will as part of a class assignment.

Littleton, Colorado has been a focus for many years for all the trendy "edufads" such as Outcome Based Education (OBE). In 1993, parents rebelled against this dumbing-down process and, by a two-to-one vote, elected a "back-to-basics" school board.

The teachers union hit back in the following election and retook control of the Littleton schools. The union was supported by People for the American Way, who used the usual negative slurs, accusing those opposed to OBE of being "fundamentalists" and part of the "religious right."

Some politicians are using the Columbine tragedy to push their liberal political agenda, such as gun control. That's obviously not the answer since killers Harris and Klebold violated 18 current federal and state gun control laws that, had they lived, would have kept them locked up for the rest of their lives.

We are paying a terrible price for allowing public school curricula to teach students to create "their own value system" instead of respecting moral laws such as "Thou shalt not kill." It's time to overturn the foolish Supreme Court decision that bars the Ten Commandments from public school classrooms.

Did anti-depressants trigger shooting?

As seen in the Chicago Tribune's Health Blog:

Investigators believe that Cho Seung Hui, the Virginia Tech murderer, had been taking anti-depressant medication at some point before the shootings, according to The Chicago Tribune.

Perhaps it's just a terrible coincidence, but Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and Kip Kinkel, the 15-year-old Oregon youth who killed his parents before opening fire on his classmates, were also taking drugs for depression.

It's not yet clear what, if anything, Cho was on.

But anti-depressants are a leading suspect because they've been shown to pose a suicide risk for children; the drugs come with a federal “black box” warning. And a recent federal analysis of clinical trials showed for the first time that it can also trigger suicidal behavior among patients older than 18.

But are the drugs, which can trigger mania, psychosis, paranoid reactions and abnormal thinking, to blame? Or are they simply unable to stop people like Cho from a rampage?

Dr. Ann Blake Tracy, executive director of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness, was a consultant to 19-year-old Columbine victim Mark Taylor, who filed a lawsuit against Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc., which manufactured Luvox (Fluvoxamine), the drug prescribed to shooter Eric Harris.

Tracy, the author of “Prozac: Panacea or Pandora?” (Cassia Publications, $23.95) has said:

“The Columbine killers’ brains were awash in serotonin, the chemical which causes violence and aggression and triggers a sleep-walking disorder in which a person literally acts out their worst nightmare,” wrote Christopher Bollyn in the weekly magazine, American Free Press.

[...]

Cho, Harris and Klebold are all dead. Only Kip Kinkel--now 25--is still alive to help shed light on whether the drugs acted as an accomplice.