A Complicated Suicide Involving a Gun and a Car

"Unhappiness is a dangerous thing, like carbon monoxide.? You don’t taste it, it’s formless and colorless, but poisons slowly.? It sweeps into every pore in your skin until one day your heart just stops beating.”? Bella Pollen

Complex vs Complicated Suicide

A suicide involving more than one method has been classified as a complex suicide. A suicide caused by an unforeseen accident following a suicide attempt is classified as a complicated suicide.

Suicide by Gunshot

The typical features of suicides by gunshot are:

• gunshot suicide is rare among women
• the presence of the weapon within arm's length (so long as the trigger was not pulled by a string) or that that the gun was not re-positioned
• entrance wounds in readily accessible areas of the body and
• victims do not always shoot themselves in the head on the same side as their dominant hand

Case Report

The body of a 53 year old man was found in the driver's seat of a burning car. The hand brake and ignition were on. He also had a gunshot wound to the mouth caused by his handgun and his postmortem blood COHb was 40%. He was suffering from a paranoid disorder and he left a suicide note.

Conclusion

"The case was therefore classified as a complicated suicide in which the victim shot himself in the mouth without causing lethal brain injuries and then unintentionally pressed the accelerator pedal for a prolonged time causing the car to catch fire."

References

Simonit, F., Broi, U.D., Furioso, C., and Desinan, L., "A Burned Body with a Gunshot Wound in the Mouth and a Suicide Note: A Complex or Complicated Suicide?", Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, 72: 6pp, 2020

Wigmore On Books

The next in my series of popular and internationally recognized series will be "Wigmore on Carbon Monoxide.

The books may be obtained at my publisher, Irwin Law at

Wigmore Books published by Irwin Law