No Canadians in cross-fire at Crystal Cathedral suicide

The Crystal Cathedral is a tourist attraction, and today a group of Canadians watched as a man committed suicide in the sanctuary in front of a cross.

The man’s identity was not released, but police Lt. Dennis Ellsworth said the man was in his 40s. Church spokesman Mike Nason said there was no record of the man at the cathedral.

Betty Spicer, a volunteer usher at the famous sanctuary, said she greeted the man when he entered. She said he handed her a folded note with two cards inside as the man told her: “You may want this.”

Spicer said he then walked to the foot of the cross. She and another volunteer said they thought the man was praying when she heard a pop.

A tourist, one in a group of seven or eight visitors from Canada, told her the man had shot himself.

“I didn’t realize it. I thought he was praying,” Spicer said.

The volunteer said one of the man’s cards was a driver’s license, and that the note mentioned a pickup truck in the parking lot.

In 2004 the church orchestra conductor killed himself on the property just before a performance of the Christmas pageant. In the same year a man was wounded by a plains clothes police officer in the parking lot. The plain clothes police officer shot the guy who had been waiting for his mother, the police officer thought he was intervening in an argument.

The man who killed himself has not been identified.
There was no cross-fire, this man prepared his death, like all public suicides this is a statement.
The Orange County Register:

The note, in bold marker, indicated he’d parked a pickup truck in the parking lot and had borrowed a gun from a friend, Spicer said.

The man went to the front of the church, knelt in front of a large gold cross, reached into a backpack and then put the gun to his head. Spicer said the man appeared to be praying. She then heard a loud pop.

The man had a semi-automatic handgun and fired one round to his head, Lt. Ellsworth said.
Church greeter Yvette Manson was conducting a tour with six guests from Canada.

She was just telling the guest about the church’s around-the-clock suicide prevention services, Manson said, when she heard the loud pop.

Manson had her back to the cross and told the guests, “Oh, guess what? One of our windows blew out.”

But the tourists, who were facing the cross, informed her that the man had just shot himself, she said.

Apparently the witnesses and staff received counselling from the church suicide prevention staff and the Canadians were scheduled to go on to Disneyland.

The story isn’t about Canadian tourists, it isn’t about church tourist guides, or inattentiveness to those around us. It’s not about a mega-building and a property the size of a small town or insensitive church people; it’s about a man who made a public statement by killing himself.

I’m writing this in the hope we learn more about suicide and suicide prevention and remember he had family and friends.
Often pain and fear of living is greater than dying.
The World Health Organization estimates there is a successful suicide every 39 seconds. It is estimated there are between 20 and 30 million suicide attempts yearly. It is estimated someone who kills themselves impacts a minimum of 6 other lives; we call loved ones suicide survivors for good reason. In the US 180 thousand people a year join 4.4 million people who live with having known someone who committed suicide.

Suicide is a public health issue.
Public suicides carry all kinds of statements and meaning such as: ‘look what you made me do’, ‘my life and by extension my death has meaning’, ‘there is no hope in a cathedral of hope’.
Each witness and loved one puts in their own meaning and and brings complicated grief into a suicide death, depending on their culture and relationship with the deceased.
A public suicide can be an escape from obscurity, and in North America suicide is often judged and rationalized as cowardly, weak, murder, crazy, criminal.
Public suicides are often carried out in places where the person believes they will be cared for (in death) churches, hospitals, police stations. Adult men age 25-65 account for over half the 80 suicides a day in the US. Of those 52% shoot themselves.

National Strategy for Suicide Prevention

My condolences to his family and friends.