Got gun back the day before murder-suicide

[Jazzy]

On Monday, July 7, one day before he shot and killed his wife and then himself at a Spokane medical center, Christopher Henderson was evaluated by sheriff's deputies after co-workers called police to say he was threatening suicide.

It wasn't the first time Henderson had been the subject of a mental health check - but it would be the last.

Deputies determined Henderson was not sick enough to be taken to a hospital. Hours later the 37-year-old went and got his gun from the police storage facility where it had been held since being taken from him in May; that was after his wife, Sheena, called police to say he was threatening suicide.

On Tuesday, July 8, Henderson made his way to the seventh floor cancer clinic at Deaconess Hospital where his 30-year-0ld wife worked, and opened fire. According to the Spokesman-Review, he shot Sheena multiple times in the head and torso, then turned the gun on himself.

"This is a really horrible incident but it doesn't appear anyone did anything out of policy," said Monique Cotton, a spokesperson for the Spokane Police Department.

The murder-suicide was the culmination of at least two months of police interaction with Henderson. According to Cotton, on May 16, Henderson's wife called Spokane police to say that her husband had a gun and was threatening suicide or suicide-by-cop. Police located Henderson in a park and were able to talk him out of his car and take him to a local hospital for an evaluation by a mental health professional.

Henderson was released three hours later - but police kept his gun.

On June 19, the gun was released back to Henderson, although he did not pick it up until the afternoon of July 7 - less than 24 hours before the murder-suicide.

According to police and the state's Department of Social and Health Services, the procedure for returning a weapon to a citizen in Washington is a check to see whether that person has been court-ordered to mental health treatment. Henderson had not been.

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Do you think his weapon should have been returned to him?

 

[DrLeftover]

Hindsight is 20/20, and, evidently, the sheriff's crystal ball wasn't working properly.

 

[Sinon]

I don't think it should have been returned to him. He was proven to be severely depressed and not in full possession of his mental faculties (He threatened suicide by cop, that should've set off alarm bells all over the place). I think he should have been evaluated by a psychiatrist after the initial suicide threat, and again before the weapon was given back to him. As a result of poor policing and poor medical work, an innocent paid with her life.

 

[Phossix]

Procedures may have been followed, but it was followed to hand a man who was known to have suicidal and dangerous thoughts a weapon. Two people are now dead.