Man commits suicide at Ground Zero

http://www.nynewsday.com/nyc-suic1107,0 ... -headlines

Distraught over the re-election of President George W. Bush, a Georgia man traveled to New York City, went to Ground Zero and killed himself with a shotgun blast, police said yesterday.

The suicide victim, Andrew Veal, 25, was discovered just before 8 a.m. yesterday when a worker for the Millennium Hotel looking at Ground Zero from an upper floor saw a man lying atop the concrete structure through which the 1 and 9 subway lines run.

The worker, thinking the man was sleeping, alerted colleagues and the Port Authority police were notified.

But when they got to Veal's body, they realized he had killed himself with a shot to the head from a .12-gauge shotgun.

No suicide note was found, but according to a Port Authority police source, family members said Veal, a registered Democrat, was despondent over Bush's defeat of Sen. John Kerry. A second source said Veal, who lived in Athens, Ga., and worked for the University of Georgia, was also adamantly opposed to the war in Iraq.

More than three years after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Ground Zero remains a top tourist attraction, the site rife with symbolism.

Visitors there yesterday reacted in different ways to news of Veal's suicide. Bobbie Jensen, 54, a Republican from Phoenix, said that while she understood how Bush's victory disturbed those who dislike him, Ground Zero is not the place to act on those emotions.

"You can be upset about the war, about Bush, but this is a sacred place," she said. "You got to accept what happened and not kill yourself." But Frank Franca, an East Village artist and registered Democrat, suggested the suicide was symbolic.

"I'm very moved by it," he said. "Obviously, this person was devastated. I can see why he would come here."

Franca's friend, Jeffim Kuznetsov, a 25-year-old student from Russia who lives in Atlanta, said the suicide is evidence of how deeply many Americans were affected by Kerry's defeat.

"It's a national tragedy," he said. "This election is devastating to all who believe in democracy."

Another visitor to Ground Zero, Arushi Raval, 34, a businesswoman who lives in Chelsea, said Veal might have been active in campaigning for Kerry, only to taste defeat.

"Maybe he felt ineffective," she said of the victim. "You feel ineffective if you tried and it all failed.

"I know so many New Yorkers who are depressed over this."

How can this be? I thought guns were illegal in NYC.

That's sad, but what was he hoping to accomplish with this act?

one less moron.........

That's just stupid

um,i'm guessing that it wasnt about making a statement.The dude was just too depressed about four more years of Dubya to go on.

I feel sorry for the guy, but he's not helping anything. He is really showing that he is unwilling to compromise, but I'll give him props for believing strongly in a cause.

Damn, now there's one less Democrat in this country.

First you say you don't care how many Iraqis die, and now this...

There is something seriously wrong with you.

It's like killing yourself because your favorite team didn't win the super bowl................The only bad thing is that this asshole did it in public.......


as if most of america would give a shit.............

Maybe you should leave and come back when aren't such a filthy little troll

What can you expect from someone who's only 5 years old? I, myself, and surprised he can type so well.

were you talking about samick? or andrew veal?

He never heard about emigration?

I find it interesting that the polls have suggested that Bush won this election because of moral issues, and yet...

Do the words "do not speak ill of the dead" mean anything to you?

WNED!!

I'm not trying to start a fight i'm just stating my opinion as everyone else has done...........and if my opinion angers you then...........oh well i don't give a shit..........i'm entitled to my opinion just as you are entitled to yours........

As a jew, I sometimes think that if I ever saw a 'holocaust-like' situation coming over the horizon I might kill myself just to avoid living in the terror that I often imagine that jews (and myriad other minorities) living in a Nazi-terrorized Europe must have felt.
And though I hesitate to say that the climate in our country is the same now, it still feels really scary.
It feels scary as a woman.
It feels scary as a non-christian.
It feels scary as a daughter of a gay person.

I'm sure this man was seriously disturbed anyway and this was just the straw that broke the camels back, so to speak. But I can almost understand the feelings that would a drive a person to feel like there is a dark day coming over the horizon.