Willis shooting part of trend in military suicides
Grand Forks Herald
By Wade Rupard
Jun 7, 2015
Police still can't say why 21-year-old Marcell Travon Willis walked into a Grand Forks Wal-Mart Supercenter on May 26 and opened fire on employees, killing one and injuring another before turning the gun on himself.
The story is one that may be familiar to the people of Grand Forks. Willis, a senior airman stationed at Grand Forks Air Force Base, is not the first military member in recent years that the community has seen end his life in such a violent and public way.
Three others in the military have committed or threatened suicide on the base or in Grand Forks with a firearm in the presence of others since 2010.
All had access to several mental health services on the base.
On Aug. 6, 2010, Cory McCord, a 22-year-old airman who was deployed for six months in Afghanistan, killed himself with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head from a handgun in front of co-workers at the base.
The following year, Sean Alexander Dacus, a 31-year-old war veteran in the Army wrote on his arm "Do not resuscitate," "Donate organs please" and "A-" on his arm before fatally shooting himself in the chest on Nov. 29, 2011, outside the emergency room at Altru Health System.
Twenty months later, on July 21, 2013, Matthew Hullman, 36, was drunk and confronting military police with a handgun when he was killed by base security police.
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