Protesters: Veteran shoots self at Vt. encampment

BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — A 35-year-old mil­i­tary vet­eran appar­ently shot him­self Thurs­day at an Occupy Wall Street encamp­ment in Vermont’s largest city, fel­low pro­test­ers said. A hos­pi­tal spokesman said later the man had died.

Deputy Chief Andi Hig­bee said the pub­lic was not believed to be at risk after the 2 p.m. shoot­ing at City Hall Park in Burlington.

Peo­ple who knew the vic­tim in the encamp­ment said they were sure the man, who said he was a vet­eran, had shot him­self. Police would not char­ac­ter­ize the cir­cum­stances of the shooting.

“This per­son has clearly needed more help than we were capa­ble of giv­ing him here at this park,” said Emily Reynolds, a Uni­ver­sity of Ver­mont stu­dent and a leader in the local Occupy movement.

If gov­ern­ment pro­vided bet­ter men­tal health ser­vices, she said, “this prob­a­bly wouldn’t have happened.”

The shoot­ing took place in or near a tent at the encamp­ment. Hig­bee said police were try­ing to notify the man’s fam­ily; his name was not released. He is believed to be from the Burling­ton area.

Mike Noble, a spokesman for the Fletcher Allen Health Care hos­pi­tal in Burling­ton, con­firmed later Thurs­day that a man who had shot him­self at the park had died. Noble said he could pro­vide no other details.

Hig­bee told reporters in the park it could be sev­eral hours before the pro­test­ers were allowed to return to their tent and that the shoot­ing made him ques­tion whether the protest would be allowed to continue.

“Our respon­si­bil­ity is to keep the pub­lic safe. When there is a dis­charge of a firearm in a pub­lic place like this it’s good cause to be con­cerned, greatly con­cerned,” Hig­bee said.

The encamp­ment has been in the park since Oct. 28. The city had threat­ened to evict the pro­test­ers because the park is closed from mid­night until 6 a.m., but city offi­cials made spe­cial accom­mo­da­tion for the protesters.

Almost two dozen tents have remained in the park, and the num­ber of pro­test­ers has varied.

The first Occupy encamp­ment sprang up in New York in Sep­tem­ber, and the move­ment has since spread to cities around the coun­try and world. Pro­test­ers object to cor­po­rate influ­ence on pol­i­tics and what they call an unequal dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth.

Burling­ton is a com­mu­nity of just under 40,000 peo­ple on the shores of Lake Cham­plain known for its left-leaning politics.

Posted by AP News on Nov 10 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.