PROZAC USER LABELED `INSANE,' FOUND INNOCENT IN SONS' DEATHS

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

DATE: TUESDAY, February 25, 1992                   TAG: 9202250193
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B3   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: HALIFAX                                LENGTH: Short
PROZAC USER LABELED `INSANE,' FOUND INNOCENT IN SONS' DEATHS
A Halifax woman who killed her two sons and tried to kill herself was found innocent by reason of insanity Monday after psychiatrists said she thought shooting her boys assured them a place in heaven.
The doctors who labeled Sandra Moneymaker insane also testified that the shootings on April 5 might have been avoided if she had been prescribed the proper medicine for both depression and psychotic behavior.
On the eve of her capital murder trial, Circuit Judge Charles McCormick sent Moneymaker to Central State Hospital in Petersburg. She will be committed to the state hospital until a panel of three doctors and the judge agree she is safe and sane.
David, 8, and Billy, 16, were each shot once in the head with a .22-caliber rifle and Moneymaker was shot twice in the stomach. Her attorneys did not contest that she fired the shots.
Moneymaker was treated at a Durham, N.C., hospital from March 12 to March 25. Doctors diagnosed her as having severe depression with psychotic features and prescribed the anti-depressant drug Prozac.
Her husband blames the shootings on Prozac. He is regional director of the Prozac Survivors Support Group and was in California on Monday to help campaign against the drug.
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB