Man shoots himself in the head, twice: Police call it suicide

[pecunium]

I wish the story were as funny as the header.

Body of man, bound with duct tape, washes ashore

The police are tending to call it a suicide, saying he could have done it himself.

Austin police said Thursday that they are leaning toward a ruling of suicide in the death of a middle school teacher and activist whose body was found Wednesday in Lady Bird Lake with his hands and legs bound and tape over his eyes.

Right... because it's typical for those who drown themselves to put tape over their eyes and bind their hands and legs with tape before they jump into the water.

There are other things which raise my sense of suspicion. The guy was an activist, the FBI had been looking into him; though they said he wasn't any sort of trouble, FBI questioned his neighbors, and he implied that someone was interfering with what he did.

I hate that I think the reason this is being so quickly glossed over is that he was helping Palastinians. He was arab, and the evidence on the ground, per the APD is thin (they said in the notice of preliminary determination that there was no evidence of another person at his car.

I hate that I think a similar event, were it someone sending similar types of aid to Christians in Saudi Arabia, would get a lot more attention, even if it was a suicide.

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

"Police identified Riad Hamad, 55, at a news conference Thursday and said the binding of his limbs and the placement of the tape was consistent with Hamad having done it himself." -- Could he have taped his hands and legs, then . . . did they find an empty roll of duct tape by the water? Is that at all possible? I can only see it if he sat right at the water's edge, managed that somehow, then rolled himself in, but there would be more evidence than that.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

The information is pretty thin, but it doesn't sound outright ridiculous. I'm sceptical, but I doubt we'll see enough evidence to decide for ourselves. It used to be that Coroner's Courts in England were a bit reluctant to class a death as suicide, but if the press release is right about the tape, and the lack of signs of other people, it'd be hard to say it was something else.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

It's possible, and I can even come up with several, plausible, scenarios for it.

But Occam's razor tells me to be suspicious of them, and I'd like to see a more transparent explantion of how the police came to this conclusion.