This message was originally addressed to ALL
and was forwarded to you by KARI STURGEON
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FORUM:   EMS(Rescue                           HOST: MCBBS
DATE:    Dec-22-96 3:13pm                     MSG:  2
FROM:    BOB FRANKLIN
TO:      ALL
SUBJECT: Suicide
      1994's MOST BIZARRE SUICIDE
      At the 1994 annual awards dinner given by the American
    Association for Forensic Science, AAFS president Don Harper
    Mills astounded his audience in San Diego with the legal
    complications of a bizarre death.
    Here is the story:
      On 23 March 1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of
    Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the
    head. The decedent had jumped from the top of a ten-story building
    intending to commit suicide (he left a note indicating his
    despondency). As he fell past the ninth floor, his life was
    interrupted by a shotgun blast through a window, which killed him
    instantly. Neither the shooter nor the decedent was aware that a
    safety net had been erected at the eighth floor level to protect
    some window washers and that Opus would not have been able to
    complete his suicide anyway because of this.
      Ordinarily, Dr. Mills continued, a person who sets out to commit
    suicide ultimately succeeds, even though the mechanism might not be
    what he intended. That Opus was shot on the way to certain death nin
    stories below probably would not have changed his mode of death from
    suicide to homicide. But the fact that his suicidal intent would not
    have been successful caused the medical examiner to feel that he
    had a homicide on his hands. The room on the ninth floor whence the
    shotgun blast emanated was occupied by and elderly man and his wife.
    They were arguing and he was threatening her with the shotgun.  He
    was so upset that, when he pulled the trigger, he completely missed
    his wife and pellets went through the window striking Opus. When one
    intends to kill subject A but kills subject B in the attempt,
    one is guilty of the murder of subject B.
      When confronted with this charge, the old man and his wife were
    both adamant that neither knew that the shotgun was loaded. The old
    man said it was his long standing habit to threaten his wife with th
    unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her - therefore, the
    killing of Opus appeared to be an accident. That is, the gun had bee
    accidentally loaded.
      The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old
    couple's son loading the shotgun approximately six weeks prior to
    the fatal incident. It transpired that the old lady had cut off her
    son's financial support and the son, knowing the propensity of his
    father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the
    expectation that his father would shoot his mother he case now
    becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of
    Ronald Opus.
      There was an exquisite twist.  Further investigation revealed that
    the son, one Ronald Opus, had become increasingly despondent over th
    failure of his attempt to engineer his mother's murder.  This led hi
    to jump off the ten-story building on March 23, only to be killed by
    a shotgun blast through a ninth story window.
      The medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.
FELIX J. CIESLINSKI
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