-Caveat Lector-
"[Salt Lake City police] want psychiatrists to be required to report to
the state Department of Public Safety the names of all people diagnosed with
any one of a list of particular mental illnesses ...
... so that gun dealers would be barred from selling to anyone on the
list.
"Television coverage of the NATO attack in Kosovo, reminding [the
shooter] of his wartime youth, a might have spurred his deadly attack.".
Utah Mulls Shooting Circumstances
By HANNAH WOLFSON
.c The Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A mentally ill man's shooting rampage at the Mormon
Family History Library has left health officials, law enforcement and the
gunman's son arguing over whether the tragedy could have been averted.
``It's so terrible, so shocking and it could have easily been prevented,''
said Alex Babarin, 48.
His 71-year-old father, Sergei Babarin, walked into the library Thursday and
opened fire, killing two people and wounding four before police killed him.
While Alex Babarin said Friday that the mental health system should have been
more attentive, Salt Lake County mental health officials said they did
everything they legally could.
Meanwhile, Police Chief Ruben Ortega pushed for new laws to keep guns out of
the hands of certain mentally ill people.
``This is ludicrous. It's happening too much all over the country and
innocent people are dying,'' Ortega said.
The chief focused on loopholes in parts of the 1994 Brady bill, which
prohibits the sale of guns to those who have been declared mentally
incompetent. Ortega said the problem is that few of Utah's 100,000 people
diagnosed with mental illness meet a threshold required by law, which
essentially requires a person to be a clear and imminent danger to himself or
others.
Ortega wants psychiatrists to be required to report to the state Department
of Public Safety the names of people diagnosed with any one of a list of
particular mental illnesses. Gun dealers would then be barred from selling to
anyone on the list.
``That's so doable and it makes so much sense,'' Ortega said. ``We can work
out the law to give the doctors and patients protection.''
But Alex Babarin said that law wouldn't have deterred his paranoid father's
murderous impulses.
``He could just take a car and run people down,'' Babarin said
Babarin said he fought to get his father committed for nearly a year. Just
two days before the shooting, his father accused him of spying and being out
to get him -- the same charges he leveled against his wife, his neighbors,
even people passing in the street.
But his illness went untreated because he also feared doctors and refused to
take the medication prescribed to him, calling it poison.
In recent weeks Sergei Babarin had said television coverage of the NATO
attack in Kosovo reminded him of his wartime youth, and his son thinks that
might have spurred Thursday's deadly attack.
``It would have been easily prevented, just by taking him for a few days or a
few weeks at the hospital, start him taking medicine,'' Babarin said.
But Valley Mental Health center did not admit him because doctors there did
not diagnose him with schizophrenia.
Dr. Michael Stevens, Valley's clinical director, said the hospital could not
declare him incompetent for fear of violating his civil rights, which demand
an involuntary patient show an imminent threat of endangering himself or
others.
Instead, it was determined that Babarin would be admitted if he showed
further signs of danger.
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