88-year-old Roy Charles Laird entered the nursing home where his wife, 86-year-old Clara Laird, was being cared for as a result of dementia and decline in which she was unable to care for herself or recognize anyone around her, shot her with a revolver, and sat down beside her to wait for police to arrest him.
His daughter described the killing as a "mercy killing."
Obviously there's no provision for physician-assisted euthanasia in most of the US, so Laird apparently did what he thought was right; my question is, why did he not then turn the gun on himself so as to spare the state of California the necessity of trying him as a murderer? Was he not prepared to join his wife in death? Did he have business left undone? Did he intend to do so, but lost his nerve at the moment of truth?
What a terrible dilemma for Laird and for the state of California. What a terrible tragedy.
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Clearly, California needs some new gun control laws, to stop this epidemic of shootings by octogenarians.
Sometimes the State just needs to get out of the way of people living their lives as best they can.
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