In the early hours of July 6, 2021, the life of Dimitrios Emmanuel Menas, a 25-year-old White man from Murrysville, Pennsylvania, came to a tragic end. His death, officially ruled a suicide, followed a sequence of events that raised serious questions about the response of law enforcement to a mental health crisis. Just before midnight on July 5, 2021, Menas was arrested by Washington Township police officers on suspicion of driving under the influence.
During the arrest, he expressed to the officers that he wanted to harm himself and wished he were dead.
Despite these clear indications of his distressed state of mind, the officers did not seek a medical or mental health evaluation for Menas. Instead, after a blood draw at the police station, they drove him back to the home he shared with his mother. The officers returned his keys, one of which was for a gun safe located in his bedroom. They allegedly did not inquire if he had access to any weapons in the house. At approximately 3:30 a.m., Dimitrios Menas barricaded himself in his bedroom, opened the gun safe, and shot himself.
In the aftermath of her son's death, Maria Menas filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit against Washington Township and the two officers involved, Jarred Kier and Jake Skunda. The lawsuit contends that the officers demonstrated reckless indifference to her son's safety by failing to act on his suicidal statements. It alleges that had they taken his threats seriously and sought professional help, his death could have been prevented. The suit further claims the officers did not inform his mother about his stated desire to kill himself when they brought him home.
The lawsuit points to a police report from an officer from the neighboring jurisdiction of Plum, who responded to the scene after the suicide. According to the suit, this report documents that the Washington Township officers acknowledged Menas had threatened to kill himself while he was in their custody. The legal action seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, asserting that the township failed to properly train its officers to handle individuals at risk of suicide. The case highlights the devastating consequences of a missed opportunity to intervene and provide help to a young man in crisis.
