Benjamin Campione’s decades-long struggle ends with shooting by police

Man details brother's struggle with mental illness before Thursday's fatal shooting by police
Published: Friday, May 06, 2011, 8:42 PM
By Charles McChesney / The Post-Standard

Syracuse, NY -- Victor Campione said he’d been to police three times in the past year, alerting them that his younger brother wasn’t taking his medication and was slipping deeper into paranoid schizophrenia.

On Thursday, two sheriff’s deputies and one Syracuse police officer ended Benjamin Campione’s decades-long struggle with mental illness by shooting him dead when he pointed a pellet gun at them in the parking lot of the Regional Transportation Center.

“This wasn’t suicide by cop,” said Campione, of Jordan, it was a mentally ill person reacting to what he thought was a threat.

Campione said his brother, who he calls “Benny,” was first diagnosed while serving in the Army in the late 1970s. He was discharged from the service after a year and a half of peacetime service as a medic. After that he came home and lived with or near family.
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Benjamin Campione