
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, May 4, 1990                   TAG: 9005040234
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B2   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: FAIRFAX                                LENGTH: Short

MOM OF TEEN SUICIDE ALSO KILLED HERSELF

A student who committed suicide by driving his motorcycle into the side of his school left a note asking to be buried next to his mother, who killed herself years ago, the teen-ager's adoptive parents said.

Jerry Minnick, 18, took his motorcycle on the Hayfield High School running track Tuesday, removed his helmet and raced full-speed into the outside wall of the boys' locker room. He died instantly.

Bruce and Virginia Minnick said they adopted Jerry 13 years ago. When he was 3 1/2, they said, his natural mother killed herself in her Youngstown, Ohio garage by leaving a car running until exhaust fumes suffocated her.

"Jerry would have screaming nightmares, cowering in a corner of the bed, screaming," Virginia Minnick told The Fairfax Journal on Wednesday. "For years, he would not ride in a car with locked doors because of what happened to his mother."

The Minnicks said they had not seen a letter Jerry left before his suicide, but that authorities told them he requested he be buried in Youngstown, next to his mother's grave.

- Associated Press

by CNB