At Least 5 Suicidal Emergencies Occurred This Week in Baldwin County
By Rick McCann
Blue RAM Media/Gulf Coast News
June 8, 2025
BALDWIN COUNTY Ala. Calls to the Baldwin County 911 Communications Center can often be a matter of life and death. Some more than others.
Among the many calls for help that the center receives daily is an increase in suicidal threats or situations where the person is physically attempting to take their own life. And then there are those gut-wrenching calls where the person successfully ends their life, sometimes while 911 employees are pleading for them to wait, to calm down, to just talk another minute, and then there is a gunshot, a scream, or silence.
In a county of 254,000 people, these types of calls come regularly and at all hours of the day and night and are unpredictable. Sometimes there could be three 911 calls from people threatening to end their life during one shift, one day or there could be no calls for a week or more.
But whenever that call does come, there are caring, professionals who drop everything to rush to the aid of that person who is in crisis as was the case at least five times between June 1st, 2025, and June 7th, 2025.
Three of the five were at the point of leaving this world on their terms, and sadly, one woman did take her own life on Friday, June 6, 2025, on a street in Foley Alabama.
The Foley Police Department recovered a handgun that was used during their investigation.
During the last three months, we have been working on collecting data from public records and conducting interviews with public safety personnel and we have found that during the past two years the Baldwin County 911 Communications Center received approximately 100 calls annually from suicidal persons in crisis or from friends or family members or other concerned citizens reporting the threat.
Baldwin County public safety has made changes in how they respond to these types of calls, added partners in the mental health field, and even equipped some police officers with technology that allows them to communicate directly with clinicians.
But in most responses, the patient is transported by ambulance for an evaluation and many times released back on the street within hours.
Drug and alcohol abuse, depression, and other mental health issues are plaguing small towns and big cities alike nationwide and here in Alabama.
Are we doing enough to combat it?
As one of the fastest-growing communities in the nation, it doesn’t seem like our public safety network of mostly volunteer fire departments, a few mid-sized career fire departments and a privately owned ambulance service that is regularly understaffed with long response times is the key to tackling this growing emergency of caring for the mentally ill or preventing a person from taking their own life.
We need a more cohesive response from all public safety responders and a strong commitment from city and government leaders to make training and response a bigger priority.
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