Economic Fallout Has Spurred an Epidemic of Murder and Suicide That Has Gone Largely Unnoticed

By Nick Turse, Tomdispatch.com. Posted June 5, 2009.

Distraught in the face of eviction for failing to pay rent, Ginette Denize, 48, of Canarsie, Brooklyn, New York, turned on the gas burners of her stove, started banging on her landlord's door, and returned to her apartment. Police soon arrived and, when one of them reportedly tripped and fell in her kitchen, she allegedly "hovered with a knife over" him. The two other officers then opened fire, killing her. It was conjectured that the shooting might have been a case of suicide-by-cop.

Angered that someone else was living in the home he had lost to foreclosure, Derek C. Hightower, 24, of Bristol, Wisconsin, reportedly set a fire that "destroyed the garage, the house and three vehicles."

Michael Knudson's former girlfriend wondered whether he "somehow thought he was saving his mom and brother from the pain and loss of the foreclosure [of the family home] in some misguided way." Eviction was scheduled for April 7th. Days before, say authorities, the 39-year-old killed his mother and brother, buried them in "a shallow grave" nearby, and burned down their Hudson, Ohio, home.

Police reported that Mark I. Levy, a 59-year-old Bethesda, Maryland, resident, who had been a deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration and "was about to lose his job because of the economy," died of "an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound."

Under investigation by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies for possibly "scamm[ing] clients out of millions in a side investment business he ran," Garden City, New York, resident William Parente, 59, "beat and asphyxiated his wife and daughters in a Maryland hotel room" before killing himself.

With talk of layoffs in the air and reportedly fearful of losing his job at California's Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, Mario Ramirez entered his workplace and shot two immediate supervisors before killing himself.

Reportedly $450,000 in debt, 34-year-old Middletown, Maryland, resident Christopher Wood shot and killed his wife and children before taking his own life.

At a home north of Frederick, Maryland, a man threatened to kill workers from a company that clears out recently foreclosed homes, prompting SWAT team members to be called in. Not far away, outside Baltimore, a man attempted to commit suicide while being evicted from his home.

In Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, a 27-year-old man, upset about losing his job, killed himself. A week later, another area man, who had threatened to kill himself "after recently losing his job," surrendered to authorities after a five-hour standoff.

In North Carolina, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department reported 10 "suicide threats or attempts" over the weekend of April 18th and 19th. Bill Cook, the director of the Mecklenburg County Mobile Crisis Team, told the press that economic woes had contributed to the spike.

May 2009

Faced with eviction, 33-year-old Motalekgose Mothuse Valela allegedly warned the property manager of his Dallas, Texas, apartment: "No one comes to my place without me being there, and I don't care who it is: the constable, the police or the sheriff… I will blow them all up and blow this place up," according to court documents. He reportedly also affixed a note to his door reading, "Bomb set on door, don't touch," resulting in a standoff with the Dallas police bomb squad and SWAT team which lasted several hours, before he eventually surrendered.

See more stories tagged with: economy, suicide, murder, foreclosure

Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. His first book, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives, an exploration of the new military-corporate complex in America, was recently published by Metropolitan Books. His website is Nick Turse.com.

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