Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

theregister.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 114 posts

Re: Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

#41

Post by madaxe_again »

CydeWeys wrote: post #37
madaxe_again wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems equally plausible, also based on his state, and on the oh-so-glorious track record of US police, that police officers did assault him, and used excessive force on a man who appears to have needed help rather than an impressive array of injuries and $25k bail. Your offensive presumption of innocence of law enforcement notwithstanding.

He was in the process of attempted breaking and entering on someone's house. Everyone is glossing right over that fact. This is not some innocent man who was randomly beat up by the police. He was committing a violent crime and it sounds like reasonable force was used to stop it and protect the other citizens who were endangered. Read the other responses I've left for more. I'm actually quite critical of the police i…

No, he wasn't. He was banging on their front door, admittedly hard, but that doesn't constitute breaking and entering anywhere, as he neither broke nor entered, nor was attempting to do so. If you want to break and enter, you use a window, not the frigging front door.

Also, if it were breaking and entering, they would have charged him with that. Instead, it's "Suspicion of intoxication", "Resisting Arrest" and "Assaulting a police officer", the latter two being the default charges for when you don't actually have anything worthwhile to charge someone with. 10 cops for Suspicion of Intoxication? Shit, we'll get it in the neck from the super for this one - better make it look good.

Please do show me where he was charged with breaking and entering, if I, and the coroner, have missed something.

From the neighbour's account in the autopsy report, it sounds more like they were concerned for him than scared. Hell, I've had drunken idiots pounding on my front door before, and I wouldn't consider beating them to a pulp for it, nor would I approve of, if I had called the police, them beating the poor sod to a pulp.

Also, if beating a door is considered a violent crime that warrants beating a human being in retaliation and placing a $25k price on their head, then that's a pretty damn sad place we've ended up.

Re: Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

#42

Post by dpark »

madaxe_again wrote: post #25
dpark wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're pretty incoherent. His retelling has a really jumbled timeline. Part of that might be missing context if he was replying to other tweets but they aren't linked. The ones that are linked don't look much better, though. His tweets to @jackstormwriter don't make much sense unless the archive somehow lost most of the ones from @jackstormwriter. He also claimed that the police assaulted him at his own home, while…

He may well (in fact, probably was) beating at his neighbour's door in the first instance - but the second, you'll have to take their word for it. If you read the autopsy, specifically about the blunt force trauma, either he put up on hell of a fight, or they did indeed paste him.

> you'll have to take their word for it.

I'm pretty sure if you care to check, you can get the police report for the second incident and go ask the relevant neighbors.

The likelihood that the police were waiting for Murdock to show up at his home so they could randomly attack him seems vanishingly low. Excessive force I could believe. Police with nothing better to do than randomly assault an upper-class white man repeatedly? Not as much.

Re: Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

#43

Post by jacquesm »

Zigurd wrote: post #31
frandroid wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the people downvoting the parent comment: After an officer pushed me flat down from a sitting position (at an impromptu, peaceful sit-in), another pushed his knee in my back, and started punching me in the ribs multiple times (eventually bruising one) and crying "he's resisting arrest!" until I summoned enough strength to push up a bit, release my right arm from under my body, and put it behind my own back, at wh…

I'm surprised more people don't go tit for tat on cops that do that. It's shocking that cops's reputations are not ruined permanently, and to the extent they cannot continue in their jobs and living in their communities when they use extralegal punishment.

Going 'tit for tat' on people that carry weapons and are totally within their rights of using them on you when you go 'tit for tat' seems like a career limiting move to me.

Re: Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

#45

Post by aphextron »

jwdunne wrote: post #13
protomyth wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so strange, sadly. The combination of drugs and alcohol is an especially bad thing for people experiencing depression. HHS (which includes the CDC) has a lot of papers and studies on this sort of thing.

High level of benzodiazepines is enough to kill off your inhibitions and short term memory. Mixed with alcohol, if you feel that way, there is nothing stopping you from taking your life. At 16, during an episode of depression and psychosis, I was trusted with a whole box of Lorazepam. Being in the state I was, I took the whole box. I have only fleeting images and I woke up the next day on a PICU. The not remembering…

Benzos are nothing but bad news. I had a very similar experience in my teens. Woke up 24 hours later in the emergency room with a wrecked car and no memory of anything.

Re: Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

#46

Post by Zigurd »

jacquesm wrote: post #43
Zigurd wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised more people don't go tit for tat on cops that do that. It's shocking that cops's reputations are not ruined permanently, and to the extent they cannot continue in their jobs and living in their communities when they use extralegal punishment.

Going 'tit for tat' on people that carry weapons and are totally within their rights of using them on you when you go 'tit for tat' seems like a career limiting move to me.

There is a lot of space between doing nothing, or filing a complaint that gets thrown in a wastebasket, and having a lynching. Why, for example, don't we have in-depth media coverage of the cops who did these killings? What are their backgrounds? Do they have a history of extralegal violence? What are their community connections, and do those have anything to do with them not having been arrested for, at least, manslaughter? Should the community allow the PD to shield them from publicity and protest?

Re: Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

#47

Post by mindcrime »

CydeWeys wrote: post #34
mindcrime wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on his state, it seems plausible that he did assault officers, and that they did have a right to use force against him to end that assault and take him into custody Assault, or self-defense? How do we know they didn't initiate the assault?

The police were on the scene because a citizen had called in an attempted live home invasion of someone breaking down their front door. Ian is the one who started the violence. It's very plausible to me that someone in that deranged of a state will continue being violent once people show up. I don't understand how so many people are willing to overlook the circumstances of what happened. Put yourself in the shoes of…

Ian is the one who started the violence.

Let's not jump to conclusions. People say things that aren't true, and things get distorted as they move through layers of reporting and blah. We don't know if he was actually trying to break down the door or not, and we don't know what happened in between the time the police call was made and the time the police arrived. And we don't know if the police used only the minimally necessary amount of force when dealing with Ian.

Look, I'm not saying that they did use unnecessary force, but I've learned that one should not trust what the police say as simply being true and accurate on its face. Question everything.

Re: Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

#48

Post by eric_h »

madaxe_again wrote: post #18
mordocai wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know enough about it to comment on it myself, but I saw comments elsewhere that apparently bruises appearing post mortem are quite common and those people appeared to think that was the likely cause of the bruises indicated in the autopsy. Found where I read those comments and it has also been updated: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4rlar5/official_repo...

You don't get abrasions post-mortem, however, and if it were post-mortem bruising, you'd expect it in parts of his body that were lower than others. Having bruises and abrasions on his front, back, sides and face is not a natural thing that happens after death. It's a thing that happens when you're roughed up - if you read the autopsy report there are a variety of injuries that you'd have to try pretty hard to inflic…

> I can't see how you could assault a cop in the US, given that they're armed to the teeth and usually in full armour, and usually sat in an armoured and armed vehicle.

Fortunately the militarization of the police has not gone that far yet, at least in NYC, the extent of armor the police wear usually stops at a bulletproof vest, and for the most part they only carry handguns. Armored vehicles are rarely used.

Re: Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

#49

Post by mindcrime »

CydeWeys wrote: post #37
madaxe_again wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems equally plausible, also based on his state, and on the oh-so-glorious track record of US police, that police officers did assault him, and used excessive force on a man who appears to have needed help rather than an impressive array of injuries and $25k bail. Your offensive presumption of innocence of law enforcement notwithstanding.

He was in the process of attempted breaking and entering on someone's house. Everyone is glossing right over that fact. This is not some innocent man who was randomly beat up by the police. He was committing a violent crime and it sounds like reasonable force was used to stop it and protect the other citizens who were endangered. Read the other responses I've left for more. I'm actually quite critical of the police i…

Everyone is glossing right over that fact.

No one is glossing over that fact. Some of us are saying that there might be more to the story, and/or that the facts might not be as reported. On the other hand, they might be. But a certain measured degree of skepticism seems prudent.

Re: Autopsy reveals Debian founder committed suicide

#50

Post by niccaluim »

jhardy54 wrote: post #4

I'm surprised the article didn't mention it, but check out the last page of the autopsy. They found chlordiazepoxide, diazepam, temazepam, and oxazepam in his bloodstream, which could have had some terrible interactions with alcohol. This sounds more to me like a drug overdose that caused a psychological episode than just the alcohol-fueled suicide they make it out to be. Very strange.

No one takes four different benzos at once unless they've got a specific outcome in mind.
Post reply on HN