NATION : Officer Unable to Stop Suicide
An officer watched helplessly as a homeless man locked in a car mouthed the word “goodby” and killed himself by swallowing cyanide, police said today.
Officer R. E. Ottaviano was responding to a call about a suspicious person when he found Sheridan Weir, 40, in a battered 1973 Plymouth in this Atlanta suburb. Weir refused to get out of the car, which was parked at an intersection, and then showed the officer a tin container with a label that read sodium cyanide. Weir mouthed “goodby” and then drank the lethal chemical.
Ottaviano ran to his car to call for an ambulance and by the time he returned, Weir was in the throes of death.
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