Oklahoma Gulf War Veteran Called Crisis Line Before Being Shot By Police

Latest police shooting victim had called Veterans Crisis Hotline
Tulsa World
By SAMANTHA VICENT
World Staff Writer
November 7, 2014

"Boyd’s wife, Peggy, said he spent several years in the U.S. Army around the time of the Persian Gulf War, and that he was a Cobra helicopter crew chief and also worked in intelligence afterward."

Nathan Boyd: The Persian Gulf War veteran had been diagnosed with PTSD and other maladies before his confrontation with police.

Between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nathan Boyd called a Veterans Crisis Hotline and told a dispatcher that he had weapons and wanted to commit suicide by forcing law enforcement officers to shoot him.

Boyd’s call went to a New York call center, and soon afterward Tulsa police began searching for the 46-year-old U.S. Army veteran. At around 9:15 p.m., crisis and patrol officers finally tracked his pickup truck to a QuikTrip convenience store at 21st Street and 129th East Avenue.

About 10 minutes later, Officer Demita Kinard said, Boyd exited the pickup with a weapon in hand that was later identified as a pellet gun. That’s when 19-year police department veteran Gregory Douglass fired once, striking Boyd in the neck.

Kinard said Wednesday that Boyd is expected to survive, but other officers say his goal — to goad police into killing him — is far from uncommon in the Tulsa area, and more and more veterans are reporting having suicidal thoughts, depression or another mental illness.

Tulsa police officers recently spent a year learning about the mental health needs of veterans, many of whom are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and they learned the importance of building a rapport with people who say they want to harm themselves, Lewis said.
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In crisis and out of their homes-foreclosed on in America

Foreclosures take an emotional toll on homeowners
By Stephanie Armour, USA TODAY
On a brisk day last fall in Prineville, Ore., Raymond and Deanna Donaca faced the unthinkable: They were losing their home to foreclosure and had days to move out.

For more than two decades, the couple had lived in their three-level house, where the elms outside blazed with yellow shades of fall and their four golden retrievers slept in the yard. The town had always been home, with a lazy river and rolling hills dotted by gnarled juniper trees.

HOUSING PAIN ESCALATES: Foreclosures skyrocket 65% in April

Yet just before lunch on Oct. 23, the Donacas closed all their home's doors except the one to the garage and left their 1981 Cadillac Eldorado running. Toxic fumes filled the home. When sheriff's deputies arrived at about 1 p.m., they found the body of Raymond, 71, on the second floor along with three dead dogs. The body of Deanna, 69, was in an upstairs bedroom, close to another dead retriever.

"It is believed that the Donacas committed suicide after attempts to save their home following a foreclosure notice left them believing they had few options," the Crook County Sheriff's Office said in a report.

Their suicides were a tragic extreme, but the Donacas' case symbolizes how the housing crisis is wrenching the emotional lives of legions of homeowners. The escalating pace of foreclosures and rising fears among some homeowners about keeping up with their mortgages are creating a range of emotional problems, mental-health specialists say. Those include anxiety disorders, depression and addictive behaviors such as alcoholism and gambling. And, in a few cases, suicide.

Crisis hotlines are reporting a surge in calls from frantic homeowners. The American Psychological Association (APA) and other mental-health groups are publishing tips on how to handle the emotional stress triggered by the real estate meltdown. Psychologists say they're seeing more drinking, domestic violence and marital problems linked to mortgage concerns — as well as children trying to cope with extreme anxiety when their families are forced to move.

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linked from RawStory

DoD: Hot line calls rise 40 percent every year

DoD: Hot line calls rise 40 percent every year

By Gregg Zoroya - USA Today
Posted : Monday Feb 25, 2008 15:13:19 EST

Rows of hot line operators with muted voices mask the desperation of incoming calls on a recent afternoon: a soldier back from Iraq with a drinking problem and a broken marriage; an Army recruiter in the throes of depression; a Marine in Iraq eager to reach his wife after the birth of his son.

This warren of cubicles in a suburban Philadelphia office building — with two other call centers in Arlington, Va., and St. Petersburg, Fla. — are the Pentagon’s front line for fighting the strain of war.

A few years ago, Military OneSource consultants found a temporary home for a 15-foot pet boa constrictor while its owner, an Army National Guard soldier, went to Iraq. In 2005, U.S. military doctors at a combat hospital in Iraq used the hot line to find a translator who could help treat, by telephone conference call, a wounded Nepalese soldier.

But the calls that send consultants to the “serenity room” here to chill out, or to take a walk around the building, are pleas for help from war-weary troops or their relatives.

“There’s a lot of stress [for] a lot of service members who are coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Amy DiMalanta, 34, who answers calls. “They’re having a lot of issues they’re facing at home like reintegration [with their family] or just the stress of, ‘Am I going to go back [to war]?’” she said. “A lot of them emphasize that they have a hard time sleeping ... having nightmares or they’re thinking that, ‘Oh, I’m still in Iraq,’ or ‘I’m thinking I’m going to hear a bomb go off.’”
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http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/02/gns_250208_hotline/

CONTACT, a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week crisis hotline

Other battles wait at home
Monday, December 03, 2007
BY GREG VELLNER
Special to the Times
Home sweet home isn't a reality for some returning U.S. soldiers, say local experts working to reverse "an emerging issue" of suicide among troops.

"The real tragedy is when young people survive over there in the military and come home and have major difficulties re-entering civilian life or during the time between deployments," says Eleanor Letcher, executive director of CONTACT of Mercer County. "It's at that point that some of them are taking their own lives."


According to the Veterans Affairs Department, there were at least 283 suicides among veterans who left the military between the start of the war in Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001, and the end of 2005. The Army said its suicide rate in 2006 rose to 17.3 per 100,000 troops, the highest in 26 years of record-keeping. In October, two recently returned Marines one from New Jersey, the other from Bucks County committed suicide.

In response, CONTACT, a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week crisis hotline, is establishing an outreach program specifically for returning veterans and their families. The "It's About Hope" program is a first in 31 years for CONTACT and could be one of the first in the state.
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