Service hopes to halt a 'trajectory toward death'
The (Palm Springs, Calif.) Desert Sun
By Brett Kelman and Drew Schmenner
Mar. 24, 2014
As the sun rose over the sleepy desert town of Yucca Valley, Sgt. Martin Francis Scahill stood in his backyard, a black 12-gauge shotgun pressed against his chin, a single shell in the chamber.
After contemplating suicide for months, Scahill pulled the trigger. His body fell backwards onto the ground, the shotgun landing between his legs.
It was 6:30 a.m., April 5, 2010, the day after Easter Sunday. Blood seeped into the sand.
Forty-five minutes later, two deputies from the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department rang the doorbell at the Scahill home, waking his wife, who was asleep on the couch. Together, they found the body in the backyard. Scahill's belongings were scattered around his bedroom.
A laptop was left open, lingering on an image of his infant daughter, Emma. A gun box was open with a revolver inside, unloaded. A box of shotgun shells sat on a nightstand, one shell missing. A notepad rested on the bed, covered with messages his wife scribbled during an argument the night before.
Scahill is one of at least 16 service members — 15 Marines, and one sailor — who committed suicide from 2007 to 2012 while at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms. That tally does not include one Marine from the Combat Center who killed himself while deployed to Iraq in 2008.
The military has not yet released base-specific suicide data from 2013. A Combat Center spokesman said he could not confirm how many Marines had killed themselves at the base last year because he could not speak for the multiple battalions that operate at the base.
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