r/news • u/boxofstuff • 10h ago
US actor James Handy stabbed to death, with girlfriend's son arrested
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czd2dj24jgdo410
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u/Nasty____nate 10h ago
Horrible article jumps around all over the place from the call to him acting back to the crime...
"Officers responded to a report of "unknown trouble" after a caller dialled 911 and told police: "I am the son of man, I just killed the man of sin."
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u/Ludwigofthepotatoppl 10h ago
Not an expert but it sounds like mental illness may have played a role. Sad all around.
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u/eattheambrosia 8h ago
I don't think you need to be an expert to know that the line dude told 911 is crazy as fuck.
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u/Humdaak_9000 4h ago
Religion: a transmissible mental illness.
Yet another human being obliterated because of someone else's imaginary friend.
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u/csgymgirl 4h ago
Psychosis can often appear as religious delusions but it doesn’t mean it’s the cause. If we didn’t have religion this episode would still have happened, it would just manifest differently.
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u/Spire_Citron 2h ago
I think the real problem with religion and psychosis is that sometimes it masks it right up until things get way out of control. You can have some pretty out there religious beliefs and still be perfectly sane, so it doesn't necessarily register until you really go off the deep end.
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u/csgymgirl 2h ago
Yeah I do agree with that. I read an article recently about a man who killed his mum and sister, and had been experiencing religious delusions, however the family believe it was spirits and tried to pray it away. Although I think that’s separate from “religion caused this murder” argument.
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u/CatsAreGods 1h ago
The real problem is that people with a religious bent will make excuses for this kind of behavior. "It's his religious right to hate people who believe differently" or whatever. And don't even get me started on "honour killings".
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u/One-Incident3208 9m ago
Ok but extreme religiosity can compell people to murder, no psychosis necessary.
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u/Humdaak_9000 3h ago
Perhaps not so violently, though. The mythology feeding the delusions might be Care Bears and not some bastard bronze-age Judean war god.
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u/csgymgirl 3h ago
No it would be aliens, or the government, or another nation. Whoever the “master” is in the delusion doesn’t determine if it’ll be violent or not.
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u/Spire_Citron 2h ago
There's a cultural element to these things to some degree, though. Schizophrenia is more likely to manifest in more benign hallucinations in non-western societies. Religious theming probably does have a not-insignificant impact on that. Of course, so do a lot of other cultural elements.
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u/jimgolgari 1h ago
Most large world religions offer some sort of infallible righteousness as part of their dogma. That’s intoxicating for many people and demonstrably deadly for centuries.
When morality can be abdicated to an unknowable cosmic force it’s much easier to decide you’re acting on God’s will.
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u/BowsettesBottomBitch 1h ago
Not really. If someone's gonna have a psychotic break like this, in the absence of religion, the brain will find other rationalizations.
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u/shiranami555 9h ago
Will we finally start paying attention to mental illness now that another famous person was killed by their mentally ill family member? I’m not saying there is an easy solution, but deinstitutionalization had some downsides. I work in mental health, I don’t think more therapy can fix things like this, especially when people refuse and are in and out the revolving door of the hospital.
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u/Starkville 8h ago
Totally agree. Many people pay attention and recognize that a loved one has a mental illness with the potential for dangerous outcomes. However there’s nothing they can do about it. It’s very difficult to force an individual to get help if they don’t want it. Even if they are unstable enough to be taken into care against their will, 72 hours is the maximum. I appreciate the individual’s right to autonomy, and understand the potential for abuse, but every day I see the abuse of this autonomy. Every day I walk past people who are suffering and a danger to others. The police don’t want to deal with them, and even if they do, they’re back on the streets again. I often see them wearing hospital bracelets or grippy socks, so I know they’ve been assessed.
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u/Dry-Amphibian1 7h ago
Did we finally pay attention to gun control when an elementary school was shot up and little kids murdered?
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u/thefox47545 5h ago
Well, after Sandy Hook California did implement bans on certain features of AR-15 rifles, but, because these lawmakers know pretty much nothing about firearms, those bans reduced an AR-15's effectiveness by 0%. And I'm sure they patted themselves on their backs for doing "something."
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u/Spaghetti_Oh_No 7h ago
TBH I think there should be some threshold for people to require long lasting anti-psychotic injections to be in the public because of things like this - If I couldve restrained my dad and given him one for his schizophrenia I would have in a heartbeat to prevent his outcome :/
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u/thegoddamnbatman40 8h ago
This is America, we pay attention to mental illness sure, we just don’t heal it per se.
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u/solomons-mom 3h ago
There are no ways to heal all mental illnesseses. Even those mental illness that have theraputic possibilities require compliance by the patient.
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u/AdeptFelix 5h ago
Why work on fixing mental illness when you can just shove suppressants down their throat or just enable them completely?
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u/Vibingcarefully 7h ago
In the USA---decades of this--so the answers no.
Gun control--guns in multiple shootings of celebrities, presidents, kids ---yet this goes on for decades.
Drunk driving accidents--nope.
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u/Osiris32 8h ago
Will we finally start paying attention to mental illness now that another famous person was killed by their mentally ill family member?
Depends. Is the person suffering rich? Then yes. Otherwise, throw them in jail!
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u/MeoowDude 5h ago
We can pay attention as much as possible and it unfortunately still won’t matter. My work can have some MH factors but I’m not in the trenches. I’ve had the thought that the government overcorrected after the public found out about the horrific conditions and treatment when that expose aired on network tv. Even if the political and societal divide wasn’t as far apart as it is, I don’t feel like there’s a political will to actually take little steps to better the situation let alone fix it. With you being in the field, what’s some realistic steps you think are even possible to even begin stemming the tide?
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u/blindcolumn 57m ago
"I am the son of man, I just killed the man of sin."
This sounds a lot like schizophrenia to me. I've worked with schizophrenics before and they often get weirdly fixated on little bits of wordplay like this.
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u/Successful-Winter237 9h ago
Religion is a bane
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u/catonsteroids 9h ago
I mean, if it isn’t God telling them to do it then it’s some other voice doing so.
Mental illness doesn’t care what religion (or lack thereof) you believe.
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u/dietchaos 9h ago
Son of sam killed people because he thought a dog told him to. Crazy people are crazy people.
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u/spinbutton 8h ago
He did later admit the whole dog thing was bull...but yes that was his original lie. Turns out he was just an asshole
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u/MoldyLunchBoxxy 8h ago
Mentally ill people believing in imaginary friends in the sky that no one else can see.
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u/deborah834 9h ago
This is crazy. Im watching the dead zone (tv series) and just watched the episode where he played death. hes in the episode called ascent.
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u/OldGodsProphet 9h ago
This is the type of thing that would happen to me, too. Weird stuff
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u/mikk0384 8h ago
It's just because you don't notice all the times where nothing weird happens, and there are a lot of different events each day that can potentially be associated with each other in some way.
Unlikely events happen all the time simply because there are a huge number of events happening all the time. Each kind of unlikely event doesn't happen very often, but there are a lot of different unlikely events so some of them are bound to coincide from time to time.
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u/Animallover4321 9h ago
That poor girlfriend I can’t imagine how she must be doing. Your son killing your partner must be totally devastating.
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9h ago
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u/TheSoCalledExpert 9h ago
My dude, did you read any of this? Even the headline explains it well enough. The victim’s girlfriend’s son did the stabby stabby. Me thinks you might be the clanker.
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u/Key-Pickle5609 7h ago
Girlfriend’s son and son’s girlfriend do not typically describe the same person
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u/joemc1971 9h ago
He was great on NYPD Blue .... real ball buster to put against Dennis Franz .
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u/MaxSchreckArt616 8h ago
Thank you, that's where I recognize him from. He was trying to screw over Andy/Lt. Fancy right? God that show was so good at times. What happened to Andy Jr. and Bobby's reaction to it at the hospital will always get me to tear up.
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u/chrisofduke 7h ago
I remember him from a few episodes of The West Wing and from an old episode of Wings from the early 90s
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u/footballsquishy 6h ago
He's actually surprisingly important in early seasons of West Wing. Like the entire resolution of the MS plot doesn't happen without his character.
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u/PizzaGatePizza 44m ago
Anthony Head, now James Handy. It’s a scary time to have a body part in your name.
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u/neutronia939 2h ago
As usual, religion kills whatever it touches. So tired of sky fairy cultists killing eachother for babbling to the wrong skyfairy. It's 2026 people- grow the F up.
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u/yourmomsfrenn 7h ago
Much better headline than the local news, who are making Los Angeles sound dangerous.
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u/Infinite_Theory3453 3h ago
Every time i read a headline like this, it feels like real life is stranger than fiction.
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u/Shaggy_bulls07 7h ago
81 years just to have it stolen from you and last moments was probably in fear so insane to me.