The guy who saved Baby Jessica shot himself?
Prompted by the previous post about “miracle kids” and where they are now, I was randomly Googling the whereabouts of Baby Jessica and came across this in the Wikipedia entry of the “baby in the well” event:
“McClure’s rescue was credited mostly to paramedic Robert O’Donnell and police officer William Andrew Glasscock Jr., both of whom received tremendous media attention. In 1995, O’Donnell shot himself to death while suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder. In 2004, Glasscock was sentenced to 15 years in prison on charges of sexual exploitation of a child, sexual assault, and improper storage of explosives.”
The entry notes that citations are needed, but this article verifies the story:
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/23/magazine/death-on-the-cnn-curve.html
It’s truly something to read. The article is long, but every page is well worth the time.
According to the report, the pressure of having been the baby-saving celebrity eventually became too much. When the Oklahoma bombing happened and appeared on the nightly news a few years later, O’Donnell was upset that he didn’t have enough money to make the trip to go help. The article says that his mother reported him thinking about how much psychological help the rescuers themselves would need after everything was said and done.
There’s another whole other entry that could be written about the second guy mentioned in the Wikipedia paragraph, and how apparently even a child molester once did a great thing for a baby in trouble; but I’m too worked up at the moment about O’Donnell.
Feel free to add your thoughts (on either) in the comment trail.
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