It looks as if the house was his, but that he was barred from
entering it.
The evening news on TV had much coverage of the incident, although all that was said was
that the man had broken into a house and was subsequently found dead, apparently through a
self-inflicted gun shot wound.
What was behind the story was not said. Almost all of the coverage related to the
fears and measures that the surrounding neighbours experienced, who either were not
allowed to enter their homes or not to leave them, until the body of the man was brought
out of the house in which his death occurred.
One of the police spokesman said that the man, a fellow officer, had died in the house.
The coverage was quite extensive and intense sensationalism without any information
relating to what drove the man to apparently kill himself. It was news manufactured
out of virtually nothing.
However, the Toronto Star reported in an article dated May 4, that "Dean Parthenis, a
spokesman for the Edmonton Police Service, said ...the 26-year-old constable's estranged
wife was in the house at the time with some family members. All escaped safely."
References were made in the coverage on TV and in the Toronto Star article of the fact
that:
Last May 14, an Edmonton police officer killed himself outside a grocery store as
another officer pleaded in vain with him not to fire the revolver he had at his temple.
Const. Greg Seath had been suspended because of a perjury conviction and had spent
much of the day walking to Fort Saskatchewan, just north of Edmonton, after leaving
suicide notes and taking one of more than 50 weapons from his home.
What neither the article nor the TV coverage mentioned, though, was that Const. Greg
Seath was charged with perjury in connection with disagreements he and his wife had with
her former husband over child custody and access issues. He hadn't actually told a lie and
not even ever signed any statements, but what he had said and what had been taped of the
conversation in question differed. It could be said that his less than perfect
memory was the death of him. (See that story)
There was more about David
Clancy's death in the Edmonton Sun, May 5, 2002, but that story sheds little light on
the tragedy, other than that it was claimed that, contrary to earlier claims, he and his
wife had not been estranged. That story, too, mentions the "purjury
conviction" of Greg Seath.
Isn't it odd, though, that a married man has to break into his own home? |
