One of the most perplexing deaths I have seen followed a welfare concern call. An out-of-town relative had been unable to reach an elderly woman and asked Plano Police Department to check on her. I was shift sergeant on duty and I took the call.
I located the apartment and knocked. There was no response. The dispatcher called the relative back and asked if the woman might be out. “No,” came the reply, she was at home. The dispatcher phoned the apartment. No answer.
I made the decision to kick in the door. I was met with the sight of the old woman lying spread eagle on her back, long graying hair still damp from a shower. She was naked except for panties. The handle of a butcher knife stuck out from below her sternum, the blade driven deep into her chest. She was already in a state of rigor mortis with onset of postmortem lividity.
I might have previously thought a person could not commit suicide in such a fashion, but there were a dozen and a half hesitation marks on her sternum and upper abdomen where she had explored with the knife tip before finding a spot and angle to drive the blade into her heart.
The front door had been locked and dead-bolted, and all the windows were closed and locked from the inside. She had showered, put on her panties, then lay down on the living room floor with the butcher knife. She had probed repeatedly with the knife, penetrating the skin into the underlying tissue in a number of places. Some spots were over ribs, some were over the sternum itself. She had finally found a place in the center just below the sternum where she could drive the knife full force up to the hilt.
I saw a lot of suicides in my career, by all the expected ways — drugs, hanging, gunshot, carbon monoxide in a closed garage, etc. I’ve had two police friends eat their guns. Another, my best friend, a former cop and fellow civilian fingerprint expert, committed suicide by alcohol. It took him three days to drink himself to death in a hotel room in a State where he didn’t live, but he did it. He phoned me less than 12 hours before he died to say goodbye, but he didn’t disclose what he was doing and I was too naïve to recognize the symptoms.
But for sheer determination, that old lady took the cake. I never did learn what drove her to the depths of despair that led to stabbing herself like that.
Learn the symptoms of a potential suicide. Check it out here:
https://lnkd.in/ghiNWCx5
The suicide hotline number is simple: 988. Call it for advice if you suspect a friend or relative is contemplating suicide. Call it if you have suicidal thoughts yourself.
Suicide not only devastates one’s family and friends, there is a strong probability a child or close relative of a suicide victim will be so shattered that they will also commit suicide. Don’t do that to a loved one.