Vietnam vet and former Mayor committed suicide after years of PTSD

Wife: Post Traumatic Stress caused former mayor to commit suicide

By Harve Jacobs

NORTH CHARLESTON, SC (WCSC) -The wife of former North Charleston Mayor Bobby Kinard said post-traumatic stress syndrome from the Vietnam War caused Kinard to shoot her friend and then take his own life Thursday night.

Susan Kinard said her husband had been very depressed in the past year and was on strong medication for the disorder. He was a helicopter gunner in Vietnam from 1966-1969.

Just before midnight Thursday, Kinard shot and wounded his wife's friend at her Mt. Pleasant apartment and then killed himself when police pulled his car over.

Charleston psychiatrist Dr. Peter Sukin said that if the former mayor was suffering from PTSD, he could have felt the effects 20, 30 even 40 years later.

"The brain doesn't have an emotional paper shredder," Sukin said. "So, if you've gone through severe trauma it's not as if you forget it."

Kinard often talked publicly about his years in Vietnam. He served as chairman of the effort to create a Lowcountry monument for Vietnam veterans. But according to his wife, he couldn't put his Vietnam past behind him.
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