Therapist Said Florida Woman Might Do Harm

A Florida woman killed by a sheriff’s deputy this week after she called 911 and threatened suicide had been involuntarily committed to a hospital earlier this year for severe alcohol-related depression and an eating disorder, court records show.

“This lady is severely depressed and a serious suicidal risk,” a therapist wrote of DeLoura L. Harrison in divorce documents on file in Santa Ana Superior Court. “There’s a substantial likelihood that in the near future she will inflict serious bodily harm on herself or another person.”

Harrison, 43, was fatally shot Monday night by an unidentified deputy after she reportedly pointed her handgun at him in a Mission Viejo hotel room.

Minutes before the 10:30 p.m. shooting, the woman had telephoned an emergency operator to say she had pills and a gun and was going to kill herself, authorities said.

The Orange County district attorney has refused to reveal the name of the deputy or release a copy of the tape-recorded 911 conversation involving Harrison.

Harrison’s father has criticized deputies for not helping his daughter. Sheriff’s officials say the deputy fired in self-defense.

Dr. Paul Blair, an Orange County psychiatrist who counsels crime victims and police officers, theorized that Harrison may have been acting out what he termed “aggravated suicide.”

“This is when a person (who does not have the means to commit suicide) provokes someone else into doing it,” Blair said. “Unfortunately, the police are too often chosen to help in the aggravated suicide. They (suicidal people) basically force someone’s hand.”

Despite her five-year-long bout with depression over losing her husband to another woman, Harrison’s death and the manner in which she died shocked and angered those closest to her.

Harrison, a one-time beauty queen and schoolteacher, had recently been named saleswoman of the month at the J.C. Penney store where she worked in Gainesville, family and friends said.

“It really floored us when her dad told us what happened,” co-worker Nancy Sieloff said.

But it was not long ago that Harrison was in the throes of depression, records show. According to court documents and interviews with her father, Harrison had been committed to Gulf Shores Hospital in Florida for several months, beginning in January.

Harrison’s mental problems began surfacing when Eugene Harrison got a job in California in 1985 and left her in Houston, Tex., said her father, Ralph H. Lewis, a retired sociology professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

It was in Texas that the marriage began showing signs of strain, at first over financial problems, then over Eugene Harrison’s employment, the father said.

In 1985, Eugene Harrison, who works in the health industry, was hired by a firm in California. By that time, DeLoura Harrison was working as a first-grade teacher and did not want to abandon her class in the middle of the school year.

Eventually, the separation became permanent, the father said. DeLoura Harrison moved back to Florida to live with her father. Lewis said that Harrison recently seemed willing to let go of the failed relationship and that she appeared upbeat when she left for California.

The long separation ended on Monday in Orange County Superior Court, records show, when Eugene Harrison was ordered to pay her $1,000 a month for the next 18 months and 36.5% of his military pension.