Jumping to Conclusions

Man kills self, woman most affected. (Consider that a trigger warning.)

I posted about this on Twitter but I wanted to write more about it here.

A man jumped to his death at the Disneyland "Mickey and Friends" parking structure on Saturday, December 3, 2022. He's not the first person to do this. This is at the original Disneyland in Anaheim, California.



Who was this guy? Why would he do such a thing?

He'd posted his suicide note for the world to see here and it went viral.

Here's what the public could see on his Facebook:



...



Here is his suicide note, posted for the public to see on Facebook.












Many, many heartfelt comments were left, before and after word of his death. Here’s just a very tiny sample of the earliest comments, before word of his death.






A lot of people thought extremely highly of this guy.

Of note:



We're never going to have the full story on this. Here are the facts we do know:

• He was a longtime successful educator/administrator who made a good impression on many people.
• He was arrested and charged relating to a domestic incident.
• Someone, likely him, posted that note on his Facebook account.
• He jumped to his death at the Disneyland parking structure during a busy Saturday night. (If he had been thrown by someone else, that would have have been seen on surveillance cameras.)
  

We don't know if he had a brain tumor, depression or other mental illness or disorder, any traumas he'd experienced, what he did or didn't do behind closed doors, and many other things.

I generally think suicide is extremely rare in being a good option. However, people who commit suicide might not be thinking clearly. Some reacting to his method of suicide note that he traumatized witnesses, including Disneyland visitors (including children) and employees. Disneyland is decked out for the holidays and it was the annual Candlelight Procession weekend, which is special holiday tradition complete with classic Christian Christmas songs and Bible readings, anticipated by many. In fact, newly returned Disney CEO Bog Iger was at the theme park.

He could have chosen to commit suicide in private, in a place to be discovered by someone who didn't know him and would have experience handling terrible situations like that. Based on what he said in his note, I wonder if he wanted to call attention to how men are treated?

The possibilities include that he was a decent man who'd never been in serious trouble before and was driven to self-destructive, desperate despair, or a master manipulator and abuser whose facade was crumbling (if you think he was an evil narcissist, consider his longtime profession and whether or not you want your kids under the care of people like that). There are many other possibilities. Only those closest to him have any certainty. One important thing I have learned from Dennis Prager is about the importance of not publicly humiliating someone. This man likely felt a great deal of humiliation, and the loss of a good name he'd spent decades building, in a way that was going to end or severely damage his lifelong career.

What he did NOT do, as many men in his position have done, is leave his wife and stepchildren for someone else or to live an unmarried life, nor murder any of them, nor did he take anyone else out.

Reports indicate he had biological children. If that's the case, especially if he had one or more prior marriages, he'd likely been through the wringer already with California family law and courts. He subsequently married a woman with minor children, which this blog strongly warns men not to do. Those situations are almost always unnecessarily stressful. He might still be alive if he'd avoided taking up with a mother.

Whether he committed a crime or not, the allegations against him were likely going to ruin the career he'd built over decades. Even if cleared, there would still be a stain that would never go away, causing problems for him going forward. Regardless of this case, in general, no woman should endure abuse and she is obligated to protect her children. But nobody should call the police over an argument. Don't call the police over a domestic issue unless you're willing to have the person shot to death or be ruined for life.

There are naive comments from people insisting he wouldn't have been taken to jail unless he committed a crime. Wrong. If a woman, especially a mother, calls the police and says she's fearful for the safety of herself or her children, the guy can be hauled away, at least for that evening. The police don't know him. Other than some paperwork, it is no skin off their nose if they take him away, but if they were to leave him home and he subsequently were to do something bad, they would be blamed.

We all have flaws, failures, sins. But not everyone, including in similar positions to this man, commits suicide. Unless he was literally unable to make decisions, he chose to go out this way. That can't be blamed on his wife. If she involved the police when she shouldn't have, that's on her. But jumping was his choice. He had other options. But we don't get to choose what a distraught person does, only how we react to it.

We know that the system can be terrible to men, especially husbands, fathers, and stepfathers.

What we don't know is everything that happened in this particular case. Unless he was a serious abuser, I am sorry he's gone. If he abused his wife or stepdaughters, they have my sympathies. All of his loved ones have my sympathies, as do anyone who was exposed to the results of his final decision. Imagine taking your child on a very expensive Disneyland visit during the holiday season and having the last thing they see there be a guy jumping to his death.

It's all such a terrible thing regardless of which details are true.