Two Survivors of the Parkland Shooting Event Reported to Commit Suicide with Guns Within a Week of Each Other
In another strange coincidence, Jeremy Richman, a 49-year-old neuroscientist who was the father of a 6-year old child reportedly killed in the Sandy Hook shooting, also killed himself. Police have not revealed the method of suicide. Richman was a plaintiff in one of the defamation lawsuits against Alex Jones.
Parkland,
FL – A second survivor of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
massacre committed suicide on Saturday night, one week after a classmate
was the first survivor to kill herself.
Coral
Springs police responded to a Parkland home for a report of a shooting
on March 23 to find 16-year-old Calvin Desir dead of a gunshot wound to
the head, the Daily Mail reported.
Desir, like his former Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School classmate Sydney Aiello who committed suicide a week earlier, was at school the day of the 2018 massacre but survived.
Seventeen students and staff were murdered by a 19-year-old gunman on Feb. 14, 2018. Another 17 were wounded during the melee.
Aiello’s
family has said their daughter could not handle the survivor guilt
associated with surviving the shooting spree and losing friends to the
gunman’s bullets.
Desir’s older sister, Brittany Wright, created a GoFundMe page to help her family with Desir’s funeral expenses and described her little brother in detail.
“My
family is grieving over the loss of a wonderful and amazing son,
brother, nephew, and friend,” she wrote. “As his older sister, I had the
pleasure of watching Calvin grow from a child to a respectable young
man. He was a fellow student at Stoneman Douglas with strong aspirations
of one day becoming an engineer, which inspired him to always find new
projects around the house to challenge his skills.”
“Calvin
was so loving and well loved by all his peers and family,” Wright
continued. “He enjoyed riding his bike with his friends, shopping,
cooking and trying new recipes with his mom, performing yard work and
various chores with his dad and spending quality time with our baby
sister and I.”
“I
can tell you firsthand that he was one of a kind, very soft spoken, and
never once hurt a fly. If you ever asked him to do the simplest task,
he was right on it. His selflessness and quick action to help others is
something that we all deeply admired. Calvin Desir was truly special to
us all and will forever live on in our hearts. We love you Calvin!” she
wrote.
Devastated
by the two deaths in quick succession, the city of Coral Springs
quickly announced a Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Town Hall
Meeting on Wednesday night, the Miami Herald reported.
“The
tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School did not end when the
gunfire stopped or when the 17 victims were laid to rest,” the Coral
Springs Police Department posted on its official Facebook
page. “The City of Coral Springs recognizes the anxiety and suffering
continues for students, teachers and families who have experienced such
violence and devastating loss.”
“In the span of one week we lost two teens from MSD to an apparent suicide. We simply cannot let the events of that day take the lives of any more of our children,” the post continued. “As a City we are committed to shining a light on those who suffer in the darkness. The mental health of our children and all those who have been affected by the MSD tragedy must be made a priority.”
Broward
Schools Superintendent Robert Muncie did not officially release Desir’s
identity, but tweeted that he had met with the boy’s family and gotten a
sense of “what a great young man he was,” the Daily Mail reported.
Ryan
Petty, who lost his 14-year-old daughter Alaina Petty in the Feb. 14,
2018 school shooting, formed a suicide prevention organization in the
wake of his daughter’s death.
“The issue of suicide needs to be talked about. This is another tragic example,” Petty told the Miami Herald.
He
addressed a little known statistic about the Columbine High School
massacre on April 20, 1999, when 12 students and one teacher were gunned
down by a classmate, the Daily Mail reported.
“When
you look at Columbine as an example, almost just as many students
killed themselves after the fact than in the actual shooting. That needs
to change. We need to get them the help they need,” Petty said.
Additional sources:
https://news.sky.com/story/sydney-aiello-parkland-school-shooting-survivor-kills-herself-11673232
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/25/us/sandy-hook-victim-father-jeremy-richman-suicide/index.html