Suicide

Smithsburg hosts day for safety awareness The Town of Smithsburg will sponsor its second annual Health and Safety Day at Veterans Park from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 17.  The event will conclude with a walk through Smithsburg to raise awareness of suicide. This event will feature representatives from the Smithsburg Fire Co., Smithsburg Emergency Services and Smithsburg Police Department as well as other state and county agencies in regard to protective services.

Gang activity causing rise in local crime rate, residents told South End schools locked down briefly Entrance to development closed as police respond to suicide Franklin Co. DA's death 'an immense loss' Chambersburg man killed in motorcycle accident

Police temporarily closed entrances to Hager's Crossing, the housing development behind the Centre at Hagerstown shopping complex, while they responded Thursday night to a suicide at one of the homes, Hagerstown Police Lt. Mike King said. Police received a call about a single gunshot fired in a home on Potter Bell Way and arrived on the scene at about 6:05 p.m., King said. Police did not release the name of the victim or the exact address where the suicide occurred. Units from the Hagerstown Police Department and the Washington County Sheriff's Department were on the scene at 6:50 p.m., but they were reopening the streets to traffic.

BANGKOK (AP) -- The body of American actor David Carradine, best known for the 1970s TV series "Kung Fu," was found in a hotel room closet with a rope tied to his neck and genitals, and his death may have been accidental suffocation, Thai police said Friday. The 72-year-old actor's body was discovered Thursday in his luxury suite at Bangkok's Swissotel Nai Lert Park Hotel. Police initially said they suspected suicide, though Carradine's associates had questioned that theory. Police Lt. Gen. Worapong Chewprecha told reporters that Carradine was found with a rope "tied around his penis and another rope around his neck.

MIDDLETOWN, Md. (AP) -- Scores of mourners in cars formed a solemn procession from a hilltop church to a Middletown cemetery after the funeral of five family members slain in a murder-suicide last week. The private service for Christopher Wood, Francie Billotti-Wood and their three young children was held Friday at the Holy Family Catholic Community church. As a church bell tolled, the procession led by two police motorcycles and a three hearses traveled past to cemetery near the center of the small western Maryland town of 2,900.

MIDDLETOWN, Md. -- An accountant for a railroad operator killed his wife and their three children before fatally shooting himself in their Middletown home, leaving a gruesome scene that was discovered Saturday by the youngsters' grandfather, authorities said. When investigators arrived at the two-story home, the couple's two sons, ages 5 and 4, lay dead in their beds, while the bodies of a 2-year-old daughter and the mother, Francis Billotti Wood, were in the master bedroom, Frederick County sheriff's office spokeswoman Jennifer Bailey said.

GREENCASTLE, Pa. -- A Waynesboro, Pa., man who killed himself during a standoff with Pennsylvania State Police on Tuesday had no history of suicidal tendencies, according to his mother. Lois Morgan of Waynesboro said her son, Richard L. Patterson Jr., 30, never spoke of ending his life, until he called her that afternoon barricaded in a mobile home park off of Grosh Drive. He was a normal person, she said. Police said Patterson died Tuesday of a self-inflicted gunshot wound not long after he called police to report that he was holding his ex-girlfriend, Letitia Shreves, 27, and her mother Catherine Byrd, 49, hostage in an Antrim Township mobile home over what police called a domestic dispute.

Maryland State Police were investigating the case of a body in a vehicle found Monday morning as a suicide, a trooper said Monday morning. The body was discovered at about 4 a.m. on Md. 67 in the vicinity of Marble Quarry Road in southern Washington County, police said. The road had been reopened by 8:30 a.m., police said. View Larger Map

A body was found Sunday near the Appalachian Trail in the Brownsville area of Washington County, Maryland State Police said. The death is being treated as a suicide, police said.

CHAMBERSBURG, Pa. -- Girls are twice as likely than boys to attempt suicide, but boys are six times more likely to die by their own hand, pediatrician Dr. Michael Colli told a small group of educators and parents on Monday. "Because boys reach for the gun. Girls reach for the pills," Colli said at the first of three talks in a parent education series. Getting guns out of the house is the most effective way to prevent teen suicides, he said. Children have cognitive and psychological stages in their development, milestones parents can look for to see if their children are developing normally, or giving off warning signals that professional intervention is needed.