Citation

Murphy GK. Am. J. Forensic Med. Pathol. 1997; 18(3): 295-298.

Affiliation

Compunet Clinical Laboratories, Miami Valley Hospital, Dayton, Ohio, USA.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1997, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

9290880

Abstract

Suicide by means of a motor vehicle occurs more frequently than is generally realized, and may be difficult to prove. Suicide by other means while driving a motor vehicle is far less frequent. Only two cases of suicide by gunshot while driving an automobile have been previously, and recently, reported. The author reports two additional cases of suicide by gunshot while driving a motor vehicle. Each case was a young man who had been suffering from depression; who obtained a firearm apparently for the express purpose of committing suicide; and who shot himself while driving a motor vehicle on an Interstate highway. Contrary to the usual finding in a series of suicides, three of the four cases now reported each left a suicide note or notes. What is apparently a fatal single-vehicle-single-occupant vehicular mishap may in fact be a suicide at the wheel by other means. What is apparently suicide by means of motor vehicle may in fact be an attempt to disguise homicide. Medicolegal offices are urged to routinely perform complete autopsies in fatal single-vehicle-single-occupant vehicular mishaps so that cause and manner of death may be documented without question.

Language: en