doberman
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http://www.kmsp.com/news/investigators/story.asp?1645165
Fatal Oversight
How does a person who was committed to a mental hospital get a permit to buy a handgun?
It's not supposed to happen, but it did.
And now a woman is dead because of it.
When the Fox 9 Investigators started digging for answers they discovered a bigger problem.
In the interest of public safety, you don't want a mentally unstable person getting a gun, much less a permit to go and buy one.
It’s already happened at least once, with deadly consequences.
The question is will a flaw we found in the system allow it to happen again?
Amy Groth loved children; teaching was her calling.
She had so much to look forward to; she had a family to raise, a rewarding job helping kids with special needs.
Then, last summer, her life ended with a gun shot to the head. She was 44.
The mystery surrounding her death is haunting her family.
Her ex-husband Steve Musser says no one has told him exactly what happened.
The family wants to know: how did Amy Groth, a person with a history of mental illness, get a permit from police to buy a hand gun, one she would use to kill herself.
The Marshall Police Department won’t answer that question, so Steve turned to the Fox 9 Investigators.
We started asking questions about what happened and discovered an even bigger story.
There’s an information gap in Minnesota’s permit system, a gap that can put guns in the hands of the mentally ill.
Amy Groth’s struggle with depression began in the early 80s. Twice she checked herself into a hospital after becoming suicidal.
Her illness would eventually lead to the breakup of her marriage.
In 2002, a judge committed Amy to a mental hospital in her home state of North Dakota.
After a couple of months, she got out and eventually moved to southwestern Minnesota, where Steve was raising their two children.
She lived on her own and continued to be treated for depression.
However, Steve says last spring she stopped going to the doctor and stopped taking her medication. That made him nervous.
In July, Amy applied for and received a permit from the Marshall Police Department to buy a 9 mm Ruger. Ten days later, she pulled the trigger.
Anyone in Minnesota who wants a gun permit has to fill out this application.
It gives police the authority to check into your background to see if you've been a criminal, or have a history of mental illness.
If a person’s been committed, Minnesota law says they can’t get a gun permit unless they have proof from a doctor they’re no longer sick.
The commitment question is on the application form.
Since those records are private, we don’t know how Amy Groth answered that question.
A simple check of the police department's own records is enough to raise a red flag about Amy Groth.
We found that police were called to her apartment on four separate occasions in the months before she killed herself: once because the county human services department was concerned for her welfare.
According to the police report, she has “depression and border line personality disorder".
Another time because a health care worker called police to say Amy was having "suicidal thoughts and should be seen by a doctor."
The city won't tell us who reviewed Amy's gun permit application, or how extensively police checked her background. The permit was signed by Sgt. Lowel Rademacher.
He would not discuss his role in the case. We checked his history.
It’s clean except for an investigation that was ordered by the police chief after Amy Groth’s death.
The investigation ended in December when Rademacher decided to retire.
The city says the investigation’s results won’t be made public because the state’s data privacy law protects that information.
Steve Musser is worried because the secrecy means someone else who is mentally ill could obtain a gun permit.
Our investigation found it’s possible due to an information gap.
When police check into an applicants background, they're supposed to contact the state human services department to see if that person's ever been committed to a mental hospital.
But Minnesota only keeps records of commitments that happened in Minnesota, not other states like North Dakota, which is where Amy Groth was confined.
Detective Cory Cardenas handles gun permit applications for the city of Bloomington. He says it’s a concern because someone with a commitment history elsewhere could move to Minnesota and Minnesota would have no record of that history.
If that person wanted to get a gun permit here, police might be missing a critical piece of background information. They can contact the state where the person moved from, but they'd only know to do that if they suspected something was wrong.
Did Marshall police know about Amy Groth's commitment in North Dakota?
Did they bother to check their own records which indicated she was suicidal?
Those are questions her family wants answered.
It would take congressional action to make it so states are required to share information on mental health commitments.
But it’s a cause that Amy Groth's family intends to take all the way to Washington D.C.
Fatal Oversight
How does a person who was committed to a mental hospital get a permit to buy a handgun?
It's not supposed to happen, but it did.
And now a woman is dead because of it.
When the Fox 9 Investigators started digging for answers they discovered a bigger problem.
In the interest of public safety, you don't want a mentally unstable person getting a gun, much less a permit to go and buy one.
It’s already happened at least once, with deadly consequences.
The question is will a flaw we found in the system allow it to happen again?
Amy Groth loved children; teaching was her calling.
She had so much to look forward to; she had a family to raise, a rewarding job helping kids with special needs.
Then, last summer, her life ended with a gun shot to the head. She was 44.
The mystery surrounding her death is haunting her family.
Her ex-husband Steve Musser says no one has told him exactly what happened.
The family wants to know: how did Amy Groth, a person with a history of mental illness, get a permit from police to buy a hand gun, one she would use to kill herself.
The Marshall Police Department won’t answer that question, so Steve turned to the Fox 9 Investigators.
We started asking questions about what happened and discovered an even bigger story.
There’s an information gap in Minnesota’s permit system, a gap that can put guns in the hands of the mentally ill.
Amy Groth’s struggle with depression began in the early 80s. Twice she checked herself into a hospital after becoming suicidal.
Her illness would eventually lead to the breakup of her marriage.
In 2002, a judge committed Amy to a mental hospital in her home state of North Dakota.
After a couple of months, she got out and eventually moved to southwestern Minnesota, where Steve was raising their two children.
She lived on her own and continued to be treated for depression.
However, Steve says last spring she stopped going to the doctor and stopped taking her medication. That made him nervous.
In July, Amy applied for and received a permit from the Marshall Police Department to buy a 9 mm Ruger. Ten days later, she pulled the trigger.
Anyone in Minnesota who wants a gun permit has to fill out this application.
It gives police the authority to check into your background to see if you've been a criminal, or have a history of mental illness.
If a person’s been committed, Minnesota law says they can’t get a gun permit unless they have proof from a doctor they’re no longer sick.
The commitment question is on the application form.
Since those records are private, we don’t know how Amy Groth answered that question.
A simple check of the police department's own records is enough to raise a red flag about Amy Groth.
We found that police were called to her apartment on four separate occasions in the months before she killed herself: once because the county human services department was concerned for her welfare.
According to the police report, she has “depression and border line personality disorder".
Another time because a health care worker called police to say Amy was having "suicidal thoughts and should be seen by a doctor."
The city won't tell us who reviewed Amy's gun permit application, or how extensively police checked her background. The permit was signed by Sgt. Lowel Rademacher.
He would not discuss his role in the case. We checked his history.
It’s clean except for an investigation that was ordered by the police chief after Amy Groth’s death.
The investigation ended in December when Rademacher decided to retire.
The city says the investigation’s results won’t be made public because the state’s data privacy law protects that information.
Steve Musser is worried because the secrecy means someone else who is mentally ill could obtain a gun permit.
Our investigation found it’s possible due to an information gap.
When police check into an applicants background, they're supposed to contact the state human services department to see if that person's ever been committed to a mental hospital.
But Minnesota only keeps records of commitments that happened in Minnesota, not other states like North Dakota, which is where Amy Groth was confined.
Detective Cory Cardenas handles gun permit applications for the city of Bloomington. He says it’s a concern because someone with a commitment history elsewhere could move to Minnesota and Minnesota would have no record of that history.
If that person wanted to get a gun permit here, police might be missing a critical piece of background information. They can contact the state where the person moved from, but they'd only know to do that if they suspected something was wrong.
Did Marshall police know about Amy Groth's commitment in North Dakota?
Did they bother to check their own records which indicated she was suicidal?
Those are questions her family wants answered.
It would take congressional action to make it so states are required to share information on mental health commitments.
But it’s a cause that Amy Groth's family intends to take all the way to Washington D.C.
