Suicide

Mariette Hartley, co-host of CBS's "The Morning Program," says she has a fear of success as a result of her father's committing suicide. He shot himself in the head in 1963. In an interview in the current issue of TV Guide, Hartley said that during the final week of rehearsals for the morning show, "when everything was coming together here, I kept hearing a gunshot. I was ashamed that no matter how far past it I get, when I am on the verge of success, there it is again. The gunshot.

SARATOGA, Calif. - Fifteen-year-old Audrie Pott passed out drunk at a friend's house, woke up, and realized she had been sexually abused. In the days that followed, she was shocked to see an explicit photo of herself circulating among her classmates along with e-mails and text messages about the episode. And she was horrified to discover that her attackers were three of her friends, her family's lawyer says. Eight days after the party, she hanged herself. "She pieced together with e-mails and texts who had done this to her. They were her friends.

FIRST, there's a thump. Then - lightning fast - a crunch. The inhuman sound erupted moments after Richard Dixon jerked the emergency brake on the train he was operating. Right away, he knew what it was - the sound of a body being crushed beneath his train. It was a 17-year-old boy. "It's really hard to describe," the engineer said, recalling the suicide that unfolded a decade ago as his Regional Rail train barreled north from Jenkintown toward Warminster. "You just know it - and you don't forget it. " For 15 people, trains speeding along the city's railroads have been a gruesome, but easily accessible, means of killing themselves over the past five years.

Into every teen-age mind, the notion of suicide probably has intruded at some point. "If you go into any school and hand out a questionnaire, 100 percent would say they've thought of suicide," said Dr. Jerry Kaplan, Hahnemann University professor of clinical pediatrics. "There's no one who hasn't read 'Hamlet' and had it cross their mind. "To think about suicide is not abnormal. But when it gets to be an obsessive thing, that's when you get worried. " To be or not to be - when that becomes more than an academic exercise, parents, teachers and counselors worry.

Citing a nationwide increase in the number of suicides among adolescents, the Colonial school board has voted unanimously to adopt a suicide-prevention policy that orders the creation of a program to handle the problem. The board, acting at a meeting Thursday night, voted, 7-0, in favor of the one-page policy. Board members Rachele Intrieri and Frances L. Wilson were absent. The policy, which was recommended by the administration, states that the district "must" make every effort to reduce the adolescent suicide rate.

Dan Estes knows how he is going to kill himself. So does Alan Ward. Both have the AIDS virus and neither is sure he will want to live after the disease debilitates him, sapping his strength. So they are preparing for suicide. Opting for suicide is not unusual for people who have AIDS, according to interviews with people with the virus, physicians and mental health professionals. A study published in 1988 found that AIDS patients were 36 times more likely to take their own lives than the entire population of men 20 to 59 years old, the usual AIDS years, according to the study's leader, Dr. Peter Marzuk of Cornell University Medical College.

Ministry and Stereolab were influenced by it. Michael Stipe sang its praises to Charlie Rose. Ric Ocasek and Ben Vaughn produced its members. And Bruce Springsteen has admiringly called it the scariest band he ever heard. If they don't already know Suicide - poet-singer Alan Vega and minimalist keyboardist Martin Rev - after 30 years, electronic-music fans have an opportunity to investigate the duo's brutish synth-punk mayhem with a pair of new two-CD packages from Mute Records.

Parents should pay close attention to teen-agers depressed by the suicide of Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain, especially those already troubled by other issues, counselors say. Rock stars "are not only role models, but they speak to emotions kids have trouble articulating," said Linda Rosenblum, a social worker with Los Angeles Unified School District's mental-health services. "When you're a teen-ager, you feel like you're so deep, and when someone comes along and sings what you feel, it's a big deal.

Boston Bruins forward Sheldon Kennedy considered suicide as recently as this season over the sex abuse he suffered at the hands of his junior coach. "The last time was three months ago," he said yesterday. "I really thought about it. " He now sees a psychiatrist twice a week. Kennedy wants to set up a ranch near Vernon, British Columbia, for other sexually abused kids. A local businessman has given him land. Flyers star Eric Lindros also promised to help, Kennedy said.

An Upper Darby man who allegedly gave his despondent friend a loaded rifle and then stood by as the man killed himself Thursday night was charged yesterday under state law with taking part in a suicide, police said. Upper Darby Township police said William Neill, 42, of the 3200 block of Berkley Avenue, Drexel Hill, was pronounced dead of a single gunshot wound to the head about 10:45 p.m. Thursday at a home in the 3900 block of Mary Street, Drexel Hill. Neill's friend Gerald Samuel, 36, a resident of the house, was arraigned about 3 a.m. yesterday in Upper Darby Regional court on a charge of causing or aiding a suicide, police said.

Moments before he shot himself to death, a city building inspector made two short videos - one intended for his wife and son, the other saying he was devastated by the fatal building collapse on Market Street and adding, "It wasn't my fault," city officials said Friday. Mayor Nutter's spokesman, Mark McDonald, said he had listened to both videos recorded by Ronald Wagenhoffer, 52, before he shot himself in the chest Wednesday night while sitting in a pickup truck in upper Roxborough.

Ron Wagenhoffer was a conscientious and hardworking inspector who took personally the deadly collapse of a Center City building last week, coworkers said Thursday. "He was an honest guy and a hardworking guy. If there's any blame to go around, I wouldn't put the onus on him," said one coworker, who asked not to be identified because Licenses and Inspections employees had been instructed not to talk about Wagenhoffer or his death. "These guys are responsible for so much - they're always running around doing a million things.

ENOUGH HEARTACHE and confusion was lurking beneath the bricks and shattered slabs of concrete at the Market Street collapse zone to last this city a lifetime. And yet there's more now - more sadness, more pain, more questions that probably won't be answered any time soon. Ronald Wagenhoffer, the city inspector who previously examined the four-story Center City property that collapsed onto a Salvation Army thrift shop June 5, killing six people and injuring 13, committed suicide in a secluded stretch of Roxborough Wednesday night, authorities said.

TO A FEW Philadelphians with a long memory or a love of civic history, the shocking news that a city Licenses and Inspections employee had died in an apparent suicide instantly called up memories of one of the most notorious eras in city history: a time when six city workers or cops committed suicide in fewer than three years. But friends and co-workers say the death Wednesday night of L&I inspector Ronald Wagenhoffer, who monitored the Market Street demolition that collapsed and killed six people last week, is a case of a good and honest man, wracked by guilt over the episode.

KABUL, Afghanistan - A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-packed car outside a gate at the Afghan Supreme Court during the afternoon rush hour Tuesday, killing 17 people and wounding 38, all of them civilians, Afghan officials said. It was the second consecutive day that insurgents staged a significant suicide attack in the capital, and it raised again the question of whether the Afghan government can ensure security from Taliban attackers. On Monday, a failed Taliban attack on the military side of the Kabul airport killed seven attackers and did little damage.

A man fatally shot his ex-girlfriend in Prospect Park Sunday and then drove to Philadelphia and killed himself, leaving the couple's daughter orphaned, according to neighbors and law enforcement. Anthony Serody, 38, of Folcroft, shot his former girlfriend three times after confronting her in her third-floor apartment on Fletcher Street, a quiet stretch of frame homes on the north side of Prospect Park. Police declined to confirm the woman's name pending notification of relatives.

BEIRUT, Lebanon - A suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden car Saturday in Syria's central city of Homs, tearing through an area largely populated by the regime's Alawite sect and killing seven people, a state-owned TV station reported. Meanwhile, government troops took control of a key village as the regime presses its offensive to clear a path between Damascus and the Mediterranean coast. With the help of Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, President Bashar Assad's regime has been chasing rebels from long-held strategic areas linking the capital, Damascus, with the government stronghold areas along Mediterranean coast.

NEW YORK - On a radio show they hosted called "The Pursuit of Happiness," John Littig and Lynne Rosen urged listeners to embrace spontaneity. "So much about life is about impulse," Littig said on a broadcast this year on an FM station in New York, WBAI. "It's about doing it right now. " A shocking decision the couple made together appeared more methodical: Police say they killed themselves side by side as part of a suicide pact. Autopsies found that both Littig, 47, and Rosen, 45, died from asphyxiation after inhaling helium, a spokeswoman for medical examiner's office said yesterday.

A PROFESSIONAL photographer with a lengthy rap sheet died last week in a Philadelphia jail cell, and some people close to him are raising questions about the official account of his death. The man, Zakee Vaughn, 29, of Willow Grove, Montgomery County, was shot May 12 by a Philadelphia Police officer on Oxford Avenue near Summerdale, in Northeast Philly's Summerdale section. It was Mother's Day and Vaughn was with the mother of one of his two children. Lt. John Stanford, a police spokesman, said he was shot because he had tried to grab the gun from an officer's holster after cops, responding to the report of a domestic dispute, chased him on foot.

AFTER SHOOTING his ex's new beau in the foot, a former Luzerne County cop armed himself to the teeth Tuesday and declared he'd commit suicide by cop before going to jail, police said. Anthony Galla, 31, of Cleona, Lebanon County, got his death wish when U.S. marshals tracked him to a hotel in Upper Darby about 5 p.m. When four cops knocked down the door, Galla leveled a gun at them. The officers fired 52 bullets at Galla, quite possibly before he even got a single shot off at them, said Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood.