The suicide of a veteran at John Cochran VA Medical Center in St. Louis last month is the latest in a string of such deaths on Veterans Affairs properties nationwide, according to an article on the St. Louis Today website.
Phillip Crews, 62, shot himself in the hospital’s emergency room waiting area just after 4 a.m. on March 26. An estimated 20 to 22 veterans die of suicide each day, at an average age of 60.
While it is unknown how many of those deaths occur at VA facilities, they include a 76-year-old who shot himself in a parking lot of a New York hospital in August 2016, a veteran of Afghanistan who hanged himself at age 32 in a Tennessee hospital in November 2016, a 63-year-old Navy veteran who shot himself in a car at a North Carolina hospital and a 35-year-old Marine who overdosed on fentanyl at a Massachusetts VA psychiatric facility.
Security around the emergency room entrance at the St. Louis hospital will be tightened, according to VA officials. There are currently no metal detectors at the entrance and VA police are not permanently stationed there.
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