Commit Suicide

Ray Combs,40, a comedian who followed Richard Dawson as host of the game show "Family Feud," committed suicide Sunday in Glendale, Calif. Mr. Combs hanged himself at Glendale Adventist Medical Center, police said. A father of six, he apparently was anguished over his pending divorce and had tried for weeks to commit suicide, police said.Pub Date: 6/04/96

A Baltimore man who was found suffering from a gunshot wound in Rosedale early Sunday morning had driven to the gas station where he collapsed onto the parking lot, Baltimore County police said Monday. Robert Wynder Jr., 23, of the 1700 block of Montpelier Ave., was shot in a different location before driving to a Shell gas station on Kenwood Avenue in a gold four-door Honda Civic, police said. Officers were called to the gas station at 4:28 a.m., where Wynder was suffering from at least one gunshot wound in front of the gas station.

A new book advising terminally ill people how to commitsuicide has surged to No. 1 in its first week in the hard-cover advice category on the New York Times best-seller list to be published on Aug. 18. The list was compiled last night.NB The book is "Final Exit" by Derek Humphry, who is executive director of the Hemlock Society, an organization in Eugene, Ore., that advises on how to commit suicide.The book, which is published by the society and distributed by Carol Publishing of Secaucus, N.J., outlines a variety of ways to commit suicide and provides specific instructions.

Minutes after being pulled over by a state trooper on the side of Interstate 95 in White Marsh this week, 23-year-old Bel Air resident Scott Kampes was slumped over in the driver's seat of the car he was driving — fatally wounded from a self-inflicted gunshot to the head, according to Maryland State Police. Police said the shot, from a .22-caliber semiautomatic handgun found in Kampes' lap, was not heard by the two state troopers at the scene or by his uncle, who was also there.

The 16-year-old Crofton boy charged with assisted suicide in the death of his girlfriend pleaded "not involved" yesterday in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court, and his attorney asked the judge to dismiss the case, arguing that the law was never meant to apply in the case of a failed suicide pact between lovers. The request came during a two-hour hearing on charges that the boy helped Jennifer Garvey, 15, shoot herself in the head Oct. 18. He is the first person charged with violating Maryland's 1999 assisted suicide law and is also charged with possession of a handgun and reckless endangerment, all as a juvenile.

A 79-year-old Perry Hall man who left his daughter's home Thursday night, causing family members to fear that he might take his own life, was found about six miles away, unharmed in his car yesterday, police said.Baltimore County police found Charles Lewis Porter at Harrison and Baker avenues shortly before 3 p.m. A caller had reported seeing Mr. Porter there. Mr. Porter was taken to Franklin Square Hospital Center for medical evaluation, police said.Mr. Porter's family reported him missing Friday.

The initial forgetfulness and eventual bizarre behavior that typify Alzheimer's disease may be caused by brain cells that commit suicide by a built-in killer molecule.That discovery by scientists in California may help clarify work under way that seeks to explain why the brain cells -- or neurons -- die in Alzheimer's patients."What we found is the first example of a hit man in your neurons," said Dr. Dale Bredesen, a neurobiologist at the University of California at Los Angeles."This is an unusual phenomenon, and we're excited about it because it explains a lot of things that we didn't understand before," he said.

School records of 15-year-old Jennifer Garvey, who committed suicide in October, may play a role in the trial of her boyfriend -- a Crofton teen-ager who is the first person charged under Maryland's law banning assisted suicide. Anne Arundel Circuit Judge Pamela L. North agreed at a court hearing yesterday to a private review of Garvey's Arundel Senior High School records. Her decision came after defense lawyers said school records may contain information on Garvey's feelings about suicide, her relationship with her boyfriend and whether -- as prosecutors say -- her school performance suffered after she began dating him in May. The records, which the judge will review with attorneys from both sides, may help the boy's lawyers plan a defense for the juvenile trial scheduled to begin May 25. Assistant Public Defender William Davis said in court he is looking into an insanity plea -- the boy has a history of psychiatric hospitalizations -- and whether Garvey, not his client, had taken the lead in what has been called a suicide pact that ended with her death in the Crofton storm drains known to teen-agers as the Underworld.

I AM SICK TO DEATH of aliens. I'm sick of ''The X Files,'' sick of ''Independence Day,'' sick of Heaven's Gate, sick of the ''Star Wars'' trilogy. Sick of action figures, sick of video games, sick of comic books, sick of television, sick of trashy novels: in short, sick of American culture.What holds us together as a people is not our shared belief in the Constitution or something touching like that; in fact most of us would gladly shred the Constitution if that meant we could arbitrarily impose our views on our friends and neighbors.

In March 1989, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article in which 12 doctors called for "a second look" at physicians' responsibility toward hopelessly ill patients. The authors made news by stating, "It is not immoral for a physician to assist in the rational suicide of a terminally ill patient."Since then, there have been a lot more headlines about physician-assisted suicide. Earlier this year, Dr. Timothy Quill, a physician in Rochester, N.Y., wrote about his experience in helping a terminally ill leukemia patient to commit suicide by prescribing enough barbiturates to end her life peacefully.

The man who shot himself at a Timonium gun range Thursday night committed suicide, Baltimore County police said Friday. Officers were called to the Continental Arms at 9603 Deereco Road shortly after 5 p.m. Thursday for reports of a shooting. A deceased adult male was found inside of the gun range. Police said he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. cwells@baltsun.com twitter.com/cwellssun jkanderson@baltsun.com Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

After Regina Friend's son Roswell committed suicide last year, she was at least relieved to know that the loans he took out to pay for his Temple University degree were forgiven. But now, the Cockeysville woman has learned she faces a hefty tax bill on those canceled loans. "I thought I was done," she said. Then in June she spoke to her tax preparer, who told her that she will owe an estimated $14,000 to the Internal Revenue Service and the state comptroller on the loans she took out for her son. "I don't think there will ever be closure for what happened.

What happened to Chavis Carter? It is a pregnant question, potentially even an explosive one. Carter died of a gunshot wound to the temple on the last Saturday in July, but the question about his death has only grown louder and more urgent since then. It is beginning to gather national attention. So we need an answer soon, either so that suspicions can be put to rest and some imperfect peace achieved, or so that suspicions can be validated and some equally imperfect justice sought.

The killing of a woman in a Dewey Beach motel room this month appears to have been the result of a violent murder-suicide. Danielle Mehlman, 26, of Bensalem, Pa., was found dead about 10:45 a.m June 18 by a maid at the Atlantic Oceanside Motel in the 1700 block of Coastal Highway, which cuts through the center of the small Delaware vacation town north of Ocean City . A medical examiner has since ruled her death a homicide, caused by...

Regina Friend will don her son's ceremonial cap Thursday morning and take footsteps that were supposed to be his. The mere idea of those steps gives her chills, but she will take them. Her only child worked 41/2 years to earn a diploma from Temple University, and she will collect it, proud as any other parent in the room. "He's not here to accept it," the Cockeysville resident said. "So as his mother, and I'm still his mother, I need to get it for him. " Last August, Roswell Friend — Dulaney High graduate, college athlete, selfless friend, soon-to-be Temple alum — went for a run over a Philadelphia bridge and never came back.

A 22-year-old Ellicott City man whose family reported him missing Saturday was found dead of an apparent suicide in Baltimore, according to police. Police said Monday that the body of a man believed to have jumped off a parking garage deck near downtown's Port Discovery museum Friday night has been identified as Salmaan Sultan. There was no identification on the body when it was found Friday. According to his family, Sultan was a senior at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County who was finishing up his undergraduate studies in economics and was expecting to graduate in August.

Maryland should make assisted suicide a felony or risk the arrival of a home-grown version of so-called death doctor Jack Kevorkian, several groups told a state Senate committee yesterday.Some doctors, local Catholic leaders and the state attorney general's office warned of potentially dire consequences unless Maryland makes it an explicit crime to help terminally ill people kill themselves.If state law remains unclear on the issue, they said, some doctors may encourage patients to commit suicide, especially if they are poor, handicapped, elderly or uninsured.

Maryland should make assisted suicide a felony or risk the arrival of a home-grown version of so-called death doctor Jack Kevorkian, several groups told a state Senate committee yesterday.Some doctors, local Catholic leaders and the state attorney general's office warned of potentially dire consequences unless Maryland makes it an explicit crime to help terminally ill people kill themselves.If state law remains unclear on the issue, they said, some doctors may encourage patients to commit suicide, especially if they are poor, handicapped, elderly or uninsured.

From a cluttered Baltimore apartment office, Dr. Lawrence Egbert says he has helped direct the deaths of nearly 300 people across the country. Some of his patients, as he calls them, are racked with cancer, paralyzed or staring down Alzheimer's. Others simply want to slip away on their own terms. Sometimes family members gather around the bedside to say goodbye; in other cases, their appointed "exit guides" lock the door behind them and make arrangements for someone to stumble across the body.

Baltimore County police released more details Tuesday about an incident last week in which a man broke into a house in Glen Arm, exchanged gunfire with a resident and later committed suicide. The intruder, identified as Robert Floyd Buss, a 36-year-old Middle River resident with a long criminal record, knew the couple whose house it was, according to Lt. Robert McCullough, a police spokesman. Buss met the couple, Luigi and Aubrey Alvano, at a hair salon they own in Essex. "It appears that his intent was to rob them," McCullough said.