First of all,I’m sorry if this has been posted before. I couldn’t find it in a search.
I don’t think I would class this as a suicide. Mr. Opus was shot by his Father.
On March 23,1994, the medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and
concluded that he died from a shotgun wound to the head. Mr. Opus
had jumped from the top of a ten-story building intending to commit
suicide.
He left a note to the effect indicating his despondency. As he fell past
the ninth floor, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast passing
through a window, which killed him instantly.
Neither the shooter nor the deceased was aware that a safety net had been
installed just below the eighth floor level to protect some building
workers and that Ronald Opus would not have been able to complete his
suicide the way he had planned.
The room on the ninth floor, where the shotgun blast emanated, was
occupied by an elderly man and his wife. They were arguing
vigorously and he was threatening her with a shotgun! The man was so upset
that when he
pulled the trigger, he completely missed his wife, and the pellets went
through
the window, striking Mr. Opus.
When one intends to kill subject ‘A’ but kills subject ‘B’ in the attempt,
one is guilty of the murder of subject ‘B.’
When confronted with the murder charge, the old man and his wife were both
adamant, and both said that they thought the shotgun was
not loaded. The old man said it was a long-standing habit to threaten his
wife with
the unloaded shotgun. He had no intention to murder her. Therefore the
killing
of Mr. Opus appeared to be an accident; that is, assuming the gun had been
accidentally loaded.
The continuing investigation turned up a witness who saw the old couple’s
son loading the shotgun about six weeks prior to the fatal
accident… It transpired that the old lady had cut off her son’s
financial support
and the son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun
threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that his father
would shoot his mother…
Since the loader of the gun was aware of this, he was guilty of the murder
even though he didn’t actually pull the trigger. The case now
becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.
Now comes the exquisite twist…
Further investigation revealed that the son was, in fact, Ronald Opus. He
had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his
attempt to
engineer his mother’s murder. This led him to jump off the ten-story
building on March 23rd, only to be killed by a shotgun blast passing
through the ninth story window.
The son, Ronald Opus, had actually murdered himself. So the medical
examiner closed the case as a suicide.