A 33-year-old man shot and killed himself in the parking lot of the Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans’ Hospital, the second such case of suicide this year.
The man called 911 at around 12:45 p.m. as he was in the parking lot of the hospital, in the 7400 block of Merton Minter in the Medical Center Area, according to a San Antonio police report.
He told the dispatcher where he was and said that he wanted to commit suicide, the report states.
Then, multiple callers in the area reported hearing a gunshot. Officers arrived to find the man with a self-inflicted wound. EMS pronounced him dead at the scene.
Police have not released his name as of Friday.
The mans’ death is the second such suicide at Audie Murphy this year.
Navy veteran Mark Miller fatally shot himself on April 7 in the same parking lot. Since then, Texas leaders have been confronting the broader crisis of veteran suicides, triggering emotional testimony at the Capitol and renewed scrutiny of the veterans-care system.
Miller’s father said his son had been prescribed opioids by the VA without a thorough examination and that his death was meant to call attention to a broken system.
“He was completely abandoned by the VA system even though he reached out through many attempts,” Larry Miller wrote to the San Antonio Express-News. “The VA system cannot be fixed by throwing more money and personnel at it.”
READ MORE: Texas set to become first state to track veteran suicides as VA faces cuts
Lawmakers responded by passing a bill to track veteran suicides statewide, which went into effect on Sept. 1 of this year.
Advocates warn the state is still struggling to understand the full scope of the problem, even as Texas remains home to one of the largest veteran populations in the nation.
This article originally published at Man, 33, dies by suicide in parking lot of San Antonio VA hospital, second this year.