Veteran Hangs Self at County Building Day Before Holiday

Despondent over problems with his military benefits, the district attorney’s office and the county’s mental health services, a 45-year-old Oxnard man hanged himself early Friday morning from a tree at the Ventura County Government Center.

Mark Allen Hineman was found hanging from a tree adjacent to the courthouse cafeteria about 4:30 a.m. by a Los Angeles Times newspaper delivery man.

Sheriff’s investigators said Hineman left a detailed note in his vehicle nearby that laid out a lengthy list of complaints against the county and the federal Department of Veterans Affairs.

Sheriff’s spokesman Eric Nishimoto said Hineman’s note contained references to his ongoing struggles with the VA over compensation for a series of health conditions since his discharge from the Air Force nine years ago.

The note also suggested that Hineman’s timing--a day before Veterans Day--was meant to draw attention to his plight and that of other veterans in Ventura County.

“He was upset with the way the VA handled his medical problems,” Nishimoto said. “He chose to do it at the government center as a statement. It’s a sad thing. As far as his emotional problems, they were long-term.”

The Los Angeles VA headquarters was closed Friday because of Veterans Day, and no one was available for comment.

In his note, Hineman also railed against the Ventura County district attorney’s office for what he considered the unsatisfactory handling of a case after some of his property was stolen, officials said.

Officials in the district attorney’s office said they will wait to comment on the matter until after the Sheriff’s Department completes its investigation.

“Since we haven’t had an opportunity to review the note, I think it would be inappropriate to comment at this time,” said Ron Janes, the county’s chief deputy district attorney.

Others familiar with the case said Hineman had suffered mental problems for years, and his situation was familiar to court officials.

Craig Stevens, senior deputy medical examiner with the coroner’s office, said Hineman was wearing a white shirt, pants and shoes and a black hood when he was discovered suspended from the tree. Medical examiners removed Hineman’s body before workers began arriving at the government center. The courts were closed Friday, but administrative offices were open.

Sheriff’s investigators discovered the note in Hineman’s blue GMC Jimmy truck along with a stepladder and floodlights. Friday morning, the truck remained in a parking lot at the courthouse. The stepladder and the lights remained, as did a pile of yellow adhesive notes on the vehicle’s front console that carried the printed message “Live the Good Life.”

George Compton, a claims officer for the county’s veterans services division in Ventura, said Hineman had no recent dealings with his office.

Compton, a Vietnam veteran who is slated to speak today at a Veterans Day gathering at Ivy Lawn Cemetery, said that if Hineman was indeed a veteran, it is a sad way to mark such an important holiday.

“It disturbs me because I am an old soldier,” Compton said. “I spend all my time trying to help veterans get benefits they deserve. I have heard stories about how the [VA] didn’t do this and that, but I know what I see here. In my speech, I’m going to ask to thank the veterans, and one of the first groups I will thank is the VA.”

Compton said services for Ventura County veterans have improved in the past decade, bolstered by more than $41 million in federal money filtered down to the region’s 73,000 veterans every year.

“I hear bad things about the VA and I have to stick up for it,” he said. “You wonder why and how did someone get to that point that they feel they have no other way out.”