VA, police probe veteran's death
The military veteran who fell to his death at the Samuel S. Stratton Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center Hospital was an enigmatic ex-Marine who had been discharged from the hospital's psychiatric unit 90 minutes earlier, according to city police and those who knew him.
Stewart A. Mosher, 34, appeared to have jumped from the top level of the parking garage on the VA campus just after noon on Nov. 27, according to a police report obtained by the Times Union.
Four years later, he was discharged with post-traumatic stress disorder, which he self-medicated with "entheogens," or psychoactive drugs, he wrote on his Facebook page.
The police report states Mosher left the VA's psychiatric unit at 10:40 a.m. His apparent suicide highlighted the alarming issue of suicide among military veterans.
In the most extensive study on the issue, the Department of Veterans Affairs estimated that 22 U.S. veterans took their own lives each day from 1999 to 2010.
On Nov. 19, in a case tragically similar to what happened in Albany, a military veteran seeking psychiatric treatment at a VA medical center in Philadelphia walked out of its waiting room and jumped to his death from the facility's parking garage.
Mosher's apparent suicide where area veterans receive treatment also raised questions about the quality of care at the Stratton VA, whose director, Linda W. Weiss, is on administrative leave for undisclosed reasons.
Mosher graduated from HVCC with a degree in individual studies in 2006, and received a certificate from the college's digital media program in 2012.