N Dakota SWAT Team Considered Convincing Barricaded Gunman To Kill Himself

On February 10th, a resident of Fargo, North Dakota seemingly lost his mind after an argument with his wife, Michelle Schumacher. He threatened to shoot her with a pellet gun, and she wisely chose to flee her home. It wasn’t long before a police officer showed up, who Marcus Schumacher wound up killing with a .22 rifle.

Two SWAT teams then showed up, and a 12 hour standoff ensued. Schumacher refused to back down. Even after his home was tear gassed, he continued to open fire on the officers. So eventually the SWAT teams were given permission to kill him. The standoff ended after a sniper shot him in the arm, and Schumacher decided to shoot himself in the head.

But there’s a tiny detail that makes this case very different from most police standoffs.  It turns out that while SWAT was trying to come up with solutions to deal with Schumacher, they thought of an alternative solution that has recently come to light. An after-action report reveals that several senior officers considered using “negotiation tactics that would try to encourage Mr. Schumacher to stop the threat himself by committing suicide.”

Let that sink in for a moment. Imagine any movie you’ve ever seen where the police have surrounded a bank robber. An expert negotiator shows up with a bull horn and tries to convince the robber to stand down, or give up a hostage as a sign of good faith. He uses his finely tuned psychological training to put the gunman at ease, and deescalate the situation. Now imagine if instead, the negotiator simply shouted out “There’s no escape. You have nothing to live for. Kill yourself already!”

Doesn’t that just feel wrong?

Technically it shouldn’t make a difference. Schumacher was irate, armed, and had already killed a police officer. He refused to back down and didn’t have any hostages that he could threaten. It seemed likely that there would be no peaceful resolution to the situation, and telling him to hurt himself wasn’t going to put anyone else in danger. From a practical perspective, there would be no difference between killing Schumacher at an opportune time, and convincing him to shoot himself. And in hindsight, it really didn’t make a difference. In the end the police decided not to use this tactic on Marcus Schumacher, and he killed himself anyway.

But it still sounds like an incredibly evil and vile thing to even consider doesn’t it? How does that idea even pop into someone’s head? It’s especially creepy when you consider the fact that Schumacher wasn’t a bad guy, despite his deeds. According to his wife, it sounds like he was mentally ill. He had experienced countless concussions throughout his life from high school football, and from multiple falls he experienced at his job installing cell phone towers. At one point he was even struck by lightning.

When the police showed up at his house that day, he was no longer a sane man.

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Contributed by Joshua Krause of The Daily Sheeple.

Joshua Krause is a reporter, writer and researcher at The Daily Sheeple. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and is a freelance writer and author. You can follow Joshua’s reports at Facebook or on his personal Twitter. Joshua’s website is Strange Danger .