Suicide
Inside the John O'Gaunt Community Technology College (closed and empty at that time of year for summer holidays), where he had previously been a pupil, Michael Ryan barricaded himself in a classroom. Police surrounded the building and found that a number of ground-staff and two children had seen Ryan enter, and they offered guidance on how to enter, and hiding places. Negotiators made contact with Ryan only after the shooter had taken potshots at circling helicopters. At one point Ryan waved what appeared to be an unpinned grenade at them through the window, though reports differ as to whether Ryan really was armed as such. Police attempted negotiations to coax Ryan out of the school, but these attempts failed. Ryan refused to leave before knowing what happened to his mother, expressing that her death was "a mistake". At 18:52, Ryan committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with the Beretta pistol. One of the statements Ryan made towards the end of the negotiations was widely reported: "Hungerford must be a bit of a mess. I wish I had stayed in bed."
Read more about this topic: Hungerford Massacre
Famous quotes containing the word suicide:
“Fame is no sanctuary from the passing of youth ... suicide is much easier and more acceptable in Hollywood than growing old gracefully.”
—Julie Burchill (b. 1960)
“However great a man’s fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear- headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance—so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)
“Nothing shall warp me from the belief that every man is a lover of truth. There is no pure lie, no pure malignity in nature. The entertainment of the proposition of depravity is the last profligacy and profanation. There is no scepticism, no atheism but that. Could it be received into common belief, suicide would unpeople the planet.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)