Daniel Lomtevas suicide death: To what degree did a seemingly normal family dynamic albeit unawares one, lead to one Brooklyn teen taking his own life?
Daniel Lomtevas a 17 year old Brooklyn teen has died after jumping to his death off the George Washington Bridge, hours after posting a suicide note on Reddit titled, ‘In a few hours, I will be dead.’
The teen’s death comes despite efforts by law enforcement authorities to save the suicidal boy who’d been struggling with depression.
According to a report via silive, Lomvetas was spotted on the bridge by Port Authority officers in Brooklyn just before 7am Wednesday.
Whilst one of the officer’s managed to grab the teen, Lomvetas at the last minute was able to escape the agent’s grip, where he then leaped into the water.
Despite being rushed to hospital, the teen died from his injuries about an hour later.
In his suicidal note, Lomtevas, a high school graduate had talked of going to medical school, along with revealing suffering from anxiety attacks his entire life.
According to the New York Daily News who’d been able to obtain the teen’s suicidal note, Lomvetas wrote: ‘I went all throughout middle school and high school absolutely terrified of social contact,’
‘That is 12 whole f*****g years out of my life in isolation and despair.’
In his note, the teen writes that his parents never knew about his struggles with depression, saying they were ‘excellent’ people who ‘only wanted the best for me’.
‘Did I ever tell them that I spent most classes in the back of the room, convulsing with anxiety attacks? No’, he wrote.
Vera Lomtevas said she only found out about her son’s troubles in August. She believes they were linked to his struggle with transitioning from private to public school.
Wednesday’s suicide comes after the teen had tried killing himself previously on August 22 where at the time he left his parents a four-page suicide note.
At the time, the teen according to a report via New York Post the rode his bike to the foot of the Verazzano Bridge, which connects Staten Island to Brooklyn, but was caught before he could jump.
The incident led to parents, Vera and Peter Lomtevas trying to get their son help.
At one point the teen was committed to a psychiatric ward for three days but was then released.
They struggled to find him a psychiatrist. Daniel was finally given an appointment on September 24, but did not divulge his suicidal thoughts.
‘He was hiding it,’ Vera said. ‘He wanted to end his suffering.’
In his note, Daniel said he didn’t blame his parents for not taking him to a psychiatrist ‘years ago’, conceding that he seemed perfectly fine on the surface.
‘I was making excellent grades. Honor societies, scholarships, the whole nine yards,’ he wrote.
‘That’s really all a parent could want from their child, right?’
Daniel was accepted into Brooklyn College this year and had earned a Regents diploma.
His father described him as a ‘completely normal boy’. But his depression, anxiety and eventual suicide has ‘blindsided’ his parents.
On the day of his suicidal death, Daniel Lomtevas slipped out of home at 4am with the boy’s disconcerted parents calling police as they began tracking their son’s location using the Find My iPhone feature.
Yet according to the mother, Vera claims police didn’t do nearly enough to thwart her son’s suicide, saying she didn’t understand why there were six police officers at her home when the family knew where the teen was headed.
‘We were telling them the exact blocks he was on and they only had two officers and one vehicle at the bridge?’ she said. ‘We had all forewarned them.’
The NYPD said it received the family’s 911 call 22 minutes before Daniel committed suicide.
The Port Authority officer who spotted Daniel immediately stopped her patrol car and chased after the teen, halting vehicle traffic as she tried to catch him.
Daniel was the ninth person this year to jump from the bridge. Authorities said they have successfully prevented 53 additional suicide attempts.
But Vera said their efforts weren’t enough to save her son.
‘The medical professionals failed him, the police failed him,‘ she said.
‘The whole system failed him.’
Who may have also failed Daniel Lomtevas were his parents, Vera and Peter Lomtevas. An admission had the parents come to terms with earlier may have led to their son still being alive today….
