This story has hit home for many people today, for those of you who are unaware here is the story. Ervin Antonio Lupoe who had been recently let go from a Kaiser Permanente hospital in West Los Angeles, killed his wife, Ana, their five children: 8-year-old Brittney, 5-year-old twin girls Jaszmin and Jassely and 2-year-old twin boys Benjamin and Christian. He then took his own life after faxing a letter to KABC Channel 7 and calling the LAPD saying, “I just returned home, and my whole family has been shot.”
A suicide note found at the scene “indicated a business dispute” between Lupoe and Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles Medical Center. In the faxed note to KABC, Lupoe said he was despondent over an employment situation. Both he and his wife were former employees of the medical center. According to reports, there were grounds for termination that did not come as a result of layoffs. Lupoe and his wife then made a suicide pact:
This is one of the saddest stories that I have ever come across, just to know that these parents thought that suicidal-murder was the best way to resolve their fears of not being able to care for their children is scary. Today when our economy is facing its toughest times, when people are being let go from their jobs daily this is an example of the level people are willing stoop to. I truly believe that this incident, (though it was not a lay off caused to the suffrage of the economy) should set off a light bulb. The government needs to set up means of survival for people effected by the recession. I know a man that is 61 years old who was let go from his job of 30 years in the early part of 2008. This individual who had once brought home 75 to 90 thousand dollars a year, who owns 3 homes, only made 26,000 this year. We as a people have not been prepared for a turn like this and we need HELP. There is no way any tax paying citizen should feel like they have nowhere to turn. What do you think the government could do to assist problems of this nature?
Leah Janell: In My Shoes
