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Suicide Group May Have Helped 130 Kill Selves

Four members face charges in Georgia

By John Johnson, Newser Staff

Posted Feb 26, 2009 7:20 PM CST

(Newser) – A group that helps people commit suicide with helium gas may have had a role in more than 130 deaths, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. That revelation surfaced in a court document related to the arrest yesterday of four members of the Final Exit group. The four suspects, two from Georgia and two from Maryland, are charged with assisting the suicide of a 58-year-old cancer victim.

"We're just there to help," one of the group's leaders told the AP. "People insist upon it. They want to do what they want to do. They're suffering, and if they have intolerable pain, then they want to sometimes get out of that intolerable pain." The group says it guides people in donning a special hood to inhale helium, a tactic that makes the suffocation look like natural causes.

[Images (2)]

[Quotes (1)]

This photo provided by the Baltimore Police Department shows Dr. Lawrence D. Egbert, 81. He is one of the four members of Final Exit charged with aiding a suicide. (AP Photo/Baltimore Police Department)

The home where police say members of Final Exit helped cancer victim John Celmer, 58, end his life in Cumming, Ga. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

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The law is very clear,
and they clearly violated it.
- John Bankhead, spokesman for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation

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Suicide Group May Have Helped 130 Kill Selves