Murder-Suicide Paxil* [Seroxat] 09/08/2001 Wyoming *Jury Finds Paxil Was Cause of Murder-Suicide
 
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       <td width="175"><a href="http://ssristories.drugawareness.org/archive/show02ea.html?item=240">Murder-Suicide</a></td>
       <td width="200">Paxil* [Seroxat]</td>
       <td width="100">2001-08-09</td>
       <td width="100">Wyoming</td>
       <td width="639"><strong>*Jury Finds Paxil Was Cause of Murder-Suicide</strong></td>
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Summary:<br><br><br /><div><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4236200,00.html">http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4236200,00.html</a></div><br /><div>&#39;Four people dead is four too many&#39;</div><br /><div><strong>Don Schell was taking a Prozac-type antidepressant when he killed his wife,</strong></div><div><strong>daughter and granddaughter, then turned the gun on himself. His son-in-law</strong></div><div><strong>sued the drugs company - and won &pound;5m. Sarah Boseley meets him</strong></div><br /><div>Sarah Boseley</div><div>Guardian Unlimited</div><br /><div>Thursday August 9, 2001</div><br /><br /><div>Tim Tobin was an ordinary guy with a wife and a baby daughter living in small</div><div>town America and that was just fine. He and his family were simple, normal</div><div>people, he says. They didn&#39;t want to be anything different. He and Deb, his</div><div>wife and their nine-month-old baby, Alyssa, lived in Montana, but they spent</div><div>a lot of time over the Wyoming border with Deb&#39;s parents, Don and Rita</div><div>Schell, in the small oil town of Gillette. Alyssa was the first grandchild</div><div>and everybody adored her.</div><br /><div>It was the life they wanted. Tim and Deb expected to bring up their children</div><div>in Montana, just as they had been brought up themselves - close to</div><div>generations of people they held dear. But it all went shockingly wrong.</div><br /><div>In February 1998, Deb and the baby were staying with her parents in Gillette.</div><div>Deb was there for a break and stayed for two weeks because she got ill while</div><div>she was there. Meanwhile, her father Don was feeling low. He had suffered</div><div>occasional bouts of depression in the past and it had happened again. The</div><div>doctor put him on an antidepressant called Paxil (Seroxat in the UK) - a drug</div><div>in the same class as Prozac.</div><br /><div>Two days later, Don Schell, the non-violent family man and doting</div><div>grandfather, took a .22 calibre pistol and a 357 magnum in the middle of the</div><div>night and shot dead the three people in the world dearest to him - his wife</div><div>Rita, his daughter Deb and baby Alyssa. Then he killed himself. The following</div><div>afternoon Tim Tobin found the scene of carnage that will stay with him as</div><div>long as he lives.</div><br /><div>For a while, he says, he was out of his head. Once he was able to think</div><div>rationally again, he and Rita&#39;s sister and other family members tried to work</div><div>out what had happened. Their conclusion was that Don must have been affected</div><div>by the medication he was on. Nothing else made sense.</div><br /><div>They sued GlaxoSmithKline, the British drug giant that makes Paxil, and won a</div><div>historic victory in June. The jury awarded $6.4m (&pound;4.7m), but it wasn&#39;t for</div><div>the money that the family put itself through the trauma of the court case. It</div><div>was to clear Don&#39;s name and to tell the world that there could be problems</div><div>for some people with the class of antidepressants to which Paxil belongs,</div><div>known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).</div><br /><div>In that, Tobin admits he is disappointed. &quot;I really just did want to win, to</div><div>say, OK, the drugs did do it - what&#39;s everyone going to do now? And of</div><div>course, there&#39;s been nothing. I honestly believe until it&#39;s somebody of</div><div>importance it will be very difficult to get any changes. Here I am, a simple</div><div>man from Montana. I&#39;m not exceptionally rich or famous or anything. Who&#39;s</div><div>going to listen to me?&quot;</div><br /><div>Tobin is 33 now - a tall, gentle soul with an occasional quiet,</div><div>self-deprecating laugh. After the death of his wife and daughter, he too</div><div>wanted to die. He now has an inside track on the depression that sometimes</div><div>overtook Don and feels more able to assess the chances of his father-in-law</div><div>having been turned into a suicidal killer by it. He is certain it could not</div><div>have happened without the drug.</div><br /><div>&quot;To go from a state where you are in serious depression and would hurt</div><div>yourself to becoming a person who would do this to his wife and daughter and</div><div>his granddaughter - a nine-month-old baby girl who can&#39;t take care of herself</div><div>- he would have had to be so completely out of his mind and there was just no</div><div>way.&quot;</div><br /><div>Tim and Deb lived with the Schells for five months in Gillette, where Don and</div><div>Rita had been since their marriage, before moving to Billings, a four-hour</div><div>drive away. They still spent a lot of time together. &quot;We were always very</div><div>close and after Deb got pregnant even more so. This was the first grandchild</div><div>on both sides. Everybody was involved and excited. My brother took a 48-hour</div><div>bus ride so he could be there when the baby was born. That was how the whole</div><div>family was.&quot;</div><br /><div>Don was retired, but had a job for a few hours every day working as a pumper</div><div>for the oil company, checking on the oil wells to make sure everything was</div><div>running smoothly. He was a slightly reserved man, Tobin says, except with his</div><div>family. &quot;He was a bit of a father figure to me. I enjoyed spending time with</div><div>him.&quot;</div><br /><div>When Don was depressed, he says, he didn&#39;t act odd. Depression, says Tobin,</div><div>&quot;is a normal part of life anyway... If anything, he became more loving with</div><div>his family when he was down because we&#39;d all stick by him and he&#39;d get very,</div><div>very appreciative of that because we&#39;d all say, &#39;It&#39;s OK.&#39;</div><br /><div>&quot;Deb and I were both overly protective parents. I would never have left my</div><div>nine-month-old daughter there - or Deb for that matter - in a situation I</div><div>felt might get bad.&quot; Tobin had never seen Schell become violent. &quot;He raised</div><div>his voice. He liked things a certain way. But the most you can say is that</div><div>he&#39;d get irritable at times - and you can say that about anybody.</div><br /><div>&quot;He loved Alyssa. We used to laugh about it because he&#39;d hold Alyssa and we&#39;d</div><div>say you know you&#39;ve got to put her down at some point. He was just really the</div><div>proud grandfather. He&#39;d fuss over her and everything, and he&#39;d ignore us.&quot;</div><br /><div>When he starts to tell of what happened on that February night, Tobin&#39;s voice</div><div>slips into a low monotone. There are things he doesn&#39;t want to recall. He</div><div>spoke to his wife on the phone on Thursday evening. When he drove down to</div><div>join them as planned the next afternoon, they were already dead.</div><br /><div>&quot;I last heard from Deb the night before it happened. We talked at least once</div><div>a day. Deb asked me to bring some stuff down for her and I said, &#39;Do me a</div><div>favour and call me in the morning to remind me.&#39; I didn&#39;t hear from her, but</div><div>didn&#39;t think anything of it and left early from work to get down there.</div><br /><div>&quot;I got there somewhere around 4pm and there was no one answering the door at</div><div>the house. I thought they were out running errands. So I left and spent a</div><div>couple of hours trying to find them. Finally I checked the garage and saw the</div><div>cars were in there and noticed a light was on upstairs. &quot;</div><br /><div>A neighbour called the police. An officer arrived who said he was not</div><div>permitted to force the door, so Tobin and the neighbour broke a window at the</div><div>back. &quot;I said, &#39;You&#39;ll just have to arrest me, then, because I&#39;m going in.&#39;</div><div>And of course he understood - he wasn&#39;t going to arrest me. Then we ran</div><div>upstairs. That&#39;s when I found everybody.</div><br /><div>&quot;I don&#39;t remember much until I got back to Billings a few days later. It&#39;s</div><div>all a blur. I&#39;ve had nightmares over what I saw. But I don&#39;t really remember,</div><div>and I don&#39;t spend a lot of time trying to remember. I went to a therapist</div><div>because I was in a pretty bad shape. I really felt like killing myself. My</div><div>brother quit his job and moved in to babysit me because I was in such a mess.</div><div>I was worthless. I was totally worthless.&quot;</div><br /><div>Tobin went from wanting to kill himself to taking chances with his life -</div><div>travelling across Australia, New Zealand and South America, mountain</div><div>climbing, bungee jumping and hang-gliding. The worst that could happen had</div><div>happened. Death held no fears for him any more. In the end, he found he just</div><div>wanted to go home.</div><br /><div>&quot;My life has moved on. I don&#39;t live that thing every day. It&#39;s just that it&#39;s</div><div>always there, as if there&#39;s a scab over it, and every now and then you reach</div><div>a point where the scab breaks off and you have to deal with this painful,</div><div>lonely time because there aren&#39;t that many people that understand it.</div><br /><div>&quot;I have to live that for the rest of my life. It&#39;s not every day, but my</div><div>daughter&#39;s birthday comes around, our anniversary, or if I see a little girl</div><div>who looks like my daughter I have a real hard time. I remember the way Deb</div><div>smelled - the perfume she used to wear. I smell it every now and then and it</div><div>really brings me back to ground zero for a while. I guess the thing is that I</div><div>feel that way and then I bounce back a lot quicker than I did before.&quot;</div><br /><div>Glaxo&#39;s representative in court, Ian Hudson, who now works for the Medicines</div><div>Control Agency in the UK, argued that the occasional suicide or killing by</div><div>somebody on Paxil is not sufficient evidence that there is a problem with the</div><div>drug, considering the millions who take it. Tobin is outraged. Virtually all</div><div>drugs can cause a bad reaction of some sort in a few people, he says. However</div><div>small the effect is, there is no excuse for not investigating what is</div><div>happening. &quot;I don&#39;t think they&#39;ve taken a proper look at the whole thing,&quot; he</div><div>says. &quot;We&#39;re talking about people&#39;s lives. Whether we are statistically</div><div>significant or not, four people dead is too many as far as I&#39;m concerned.&quot;</div> 
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