Attempted Suicide
On the night before June 11, the date of the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, Hammer attempted to commit suicide. A diabetic, Hammer injected insulin directly into his veins, however the attempt was thwarted and he received hospital treatment. In a daily journal, Hammer mentioned his suicide attempt, and wrote:
"I keep wondering how long until my own date with the executioner will arrive, I wish I were dead right now, but I'm not. Death would be a welcome relief."
At the time, Hammer's own date of execution (previously set at November 15, 2000) had been postponed and no further date set, to allow for his appeals. Hammer’s attorney, Ronald Travis, claimed that he had no knowledge of his client’s intent to harm himself, however he did believe that Hammer and McVeigh were ‘close’. Hammer himself reported that he and McVeigh had become friends having met on a flight from Terre Haute, and were in adjacent cells.
Read more about this topic: David Paul Hammer
Famous quotes containing the words attempted and/or suicide:
“There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury. Cast about, and see if this feeling has not injured every person you have ever known to fall into it.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“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. But think how a sense of survival must clamour to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)