Sun Nov 7, 6:12 PM ET AP
NEW YORK – A 25-year-old man from Georgia who was apparently distraught over President Bush’s re-election shot and killed himself at ground zero. Andrew Veal’s body was found Saturday morning inside the off-limits site, said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. A shotgun was found nearby, but no suicide note was found, Coleman said.
Veal’s mother said her son was upset about the result of the presidential election and had driven to New York, Gus Danese, president of the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association, told The New York Times in Sunday’s editions.
Friends said Veal worked in a computer lab at the University of Georgia and was planning to marry.
“I’m absolutely sure it’s a protest,” Mary Anne Mauney, Veal’s supervisor at the lab, told The Daily News. “I don’t know what made him commit suicide, but where he did it was symbolic.”
Police were investigating how Veal entered the former World Trade Center site, which is protected by high fences and owned by the Port Authority.
that story reminded me of this post from last year around this time:
Monday, November 24, 2003
i get lots of emails from lots of people and i would say that most of them are from college-aged young men.
now this isnt the way that i set this shit up to work out, but you get what you get and you live with it.
every once in a while i get a troubling email from a young man who says he wants to end it.
i hate those emails. it puts a lot of pressure on me. and libras arent the best shoulders to cry on. we might just be the worst.
so heres what i will tell you, my friend. college is tough. its the best time of your life, which is sorta freaky, but it’ll still be tough.
there were times, especially in college, when i wanted to end it all. and i am happy that i didnt.
since college ive done an awful lot. i still dont have a car. i still dont have my dream job. but no way could i have known in college that my life would have ended up the way it has, and in lots and lots of ways its way better than i ever thought it would be.
when i was in college, for instance, there was no such thing as mp3s
or free porn
or paris hilton having sex on my computer
there wasnt anything like blogger.
we werent hooked up for the internet in any of the homes that i lived in.
the cubs didnt have any pitching.
hot girls werent emailing me pics of their hot bodies.
you couldnt type tony into google and it would be second only to the Tony awards.
there wasnt even Google.
so much changes so fast my friends that it could change for the good, even if you dont see the light at the end of the tunnel.
you’ll have to trust me on this.
one thing that i did when i was in my darkest hour was this: if i thought i was going to take a dangerous risky dumbass risk, i first asked out a super hot girl to the movies.
if she said no, i asked out a girl even hotter than her.
if she said no, i went to the movies alone.
then i wrote something.
some might say all that college angst and struggle ended up starting a pretty good habit.
keep rockin,
and drink the beer. it’s there for a reason.
tony