A man was found dead in what police are saying is the result of suicide.
On Monday at 9:05 a.m., a man’s body was discovered outside a store in the Shady Acres community, in the 2500 block of Ella Boulevard, south of Interstate 610 North, according to Houston police. A video of the man’s body has since gone viral online; the footage shows the man hanging from a tree in a field. Emergency vehicles and Houston police officers were there at the scene, the Houston Chronicle reports.
Meanwhile, on the west coast of the country, two Black men were found hanged. Police are also calling the two separate incidents acts of suicide. On May 31, #MalcolmHarsch’s body was found hanging from a tree outside the Victorville City Library around 7 a.m. “There were no indications at the scene that suggested foul play; however, the cause and manner of death are still pending,” San Bernardino County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Jodi Miller told The Cut.
Just 45 miles away, 24-year-old #RobertFuller was found on June 10 hanging from a tree outside city hall around 3:39 a.m in Palmdale. The Daily Beast reports that homicide investigators reported that there were “no signs of a struggle,” and both the city and the Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office said the death was caused by suicide initially. Fuller’s friend from high school voiced that the tree Fuller was found hanging from was too thin to have been able to support his bodyweight for very long. They added that he was also too tall to dangle from the tree. “For people to say he did this, this wasn’t Robert. For him to tie himself to that tree, it’s not possible,” said Fuller’s friend, Tommy Anderson.
