How a Paranoid Schizophrenic Got a Gun -- And Why He Is a Victim, Too

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/how-paranoid-schizophrenic-got-gun-and-why-he-victim-too



Brooklyn resident Michael Jourdan’s telephone rang around 1:30am last Friday morning. The caller asked if he was Peter Jourdan’s father; the man had found Jourdan’s phone and wanted to return it.

Michael Jourdan wasn’t surprised. How many times would his son lose his phone, he wondered. Peter, a 37-year-old diagnosed schizophrenic, could never keep track of the cell phones his father bought him. He invited the caller to come by.

Twenty minutes later, Michael Jourdan opened the door to four men, who flashed police badges and began interrogating him about his son. What was he like? Habits? Criminal record? It was minutes before Michael Jourdan got in his own repeated question: Was something wrong with his son? Finally, one of the detectives brusquely informed him that his son, Peter, was dead.

Sometime between December’s Newtown tragedy, when 20 schoolchildren and six staff members were gunned down at their elementary school, and Saturday’s Aurora shooting, the second mass murder in this small Denver suburb in nearly six months, Peter Jourdan — a paranoid schizophrenic with a criminal record associated with his illness — got his hands on a gun. According to the NYPD, he allegedly used fired a handful of shots at undercover police officers, who in turn, shot him seven times, killing him. If the statistics included people killed by police, Jourdan would be nearly the 500th victim of gun violence since Newtown. A deeper look at his life reveals the complicated interplay between mental illness, criminality and gun control in the United States.

[Recursion]

1. Pennsylvania has added fewer than 100 mental health records to the FBI database in nearly 20 years

Same problem Virginia had before the VA Tech shooting. There are days I really hate Federalism.

[napoleon_in_rags]

2. "And Why He Is a Victim, Too" What an insightful article.

Imagine somebody like Peter finding a system of supports that could him on track, living his life, being himself, feeling safe. Imagine people caring about him, wanting to see him empowered, helping him. Imagine him expressing himself, and his journey with mental illness in art, in music in writing. Imagine the possibilities that peace gives us that violence takes away.

Peace,
Nir.

[Javaman]

4. +1 nt

[PrincetonTiger2009]

3. I feel so bad for him and his family..

Why cant they find a way to make him take his drugs?..His poor father tried so hard to help him..took him to the hospital paid for his perscriptions..The state even found him a therapist to give him a diagnosis all after he physically assaulted a young neighbor..his Father even tried to crush up the pills and hide them in his food!!

What good is therapy when they refuse to go?..What good is a perscription when you wont take your medicine?

..all the tools at his fingertips that could have brought him back to a healthy productive life..but he refused to be helped...Why on earth couldnt we have him committed to a hospital where they could have kept him safe?? Why did we have to wait until he was selling drugs, stole a gun and tried to kill someone?

This part really makes me upset:

It’s unclear how Jourdan — who has a handful of felonies on his criminal record — ended up with this handgun, and whether he purchased it legally. Both the criminal convictions and his history of mental illness should have made it impossible for him to buy a gun legally

With all the gun laws we passed, any number of which were designed to stop just such a person from getting one..Multiple felony drug dealer..

All it would have taken was for the law to allow his Father or Mother to come to a licensed by the state physician and have them determine if he would have been safer in a hospital...It could have saved his family the torture and he his life

It makes no sense and I get so frustrated sometimes I want to cry : (