Florida Woman Stabs Herself, Tells Police She’s ‘Tired Of Living In Donald Trump’s Country’
A Florida woman stabbed herself three times then told responding police officers that she did so because of Donald Trump, Yahoo News reports.
According to police reports, which you can see via The Smoking Gun, the 46-year-old woman, whose name has been redacted, stabbed herself in the stomach three times with a kitchen knife. When police officers arrived, she purportedly told them she did so because she was “tired of living in Trump’s country… tired of Trump being president.”
The responding officer wrote in the report that they observed quite a bit of blood around the Palmetto home where this took place. The police officer also determined that the woman would have been in “substantial” risk of self-harm if she didn’t get medical intervention, so the officer made sure the woman was taken to an area hospital.
“I strongly believe there is substantial likelihood that without care or treatment the person will cause serious bodily harm to herself and/or others. I believe that [she] is unable to determine for herself whether examination is necessary,” the officer wrote.
It appears as if the unnamed woman has had a history of mental health issues and self-harm. She purportedly told the officer that she had been “Baker Acted” before, where “Baker Act” refers to a 1971 Florida law that allows the state to forcibly take into custody someone who is at risk of self-harm.
This is not the first time that Donald Trump’s presidency has been directly or indirectly related to someone inflicting harm on their self.
In fact, according to a November 2016 Mother Jones report, at least two LGBTQ suicide-prevention hotlines reported spikes in calls the day of, and in the days shortly after, Trump was elected. Gretta Martela, director of Trans Hotline, said that her hotline generally receives about 100 calls per day, but in the 24-hour period prior to the Mother Jones interview (a few days after the election), the hotline had received over 500 calls. Driving those calls were fears Obama-era protections for LGBTQ protections would be rolled back or that the callers would lose their health insurance coverage.
Steve Mendelsohn, deputy executive director of the Trevor Project, said that his agency got calls from LGBTQ individuals considering self-harm for similar reasons: They feared they would lose their rights, that gay marriage would be made illegal, or that they would lose their health insurance.
It’s not just the LGBTQ community, either. As CNN reported earlier in May, a Minnesota farmer claimed that some of his peers have considered suicide, or committed it, due to losing income over Trump administration tariffs.
