This is the final photograph of Phillip Herron 34, crying in his car, literally minutes before taking his own life.
He was a single Dad with three kids, struggling with crushing debt of over $20,000 and was desperately waiting for a Payday loan he’d applied for. But it was paid in arrears, with a 5 week wait time. That wait drove him even deeper into debt, and when he died he had $4.61 in his bank account and clearly couldn’t see any other way out.
Like a lot of people, especially men, he kept all of this to himself, nobody else knew how bad things were getting. This poor man even had to tell his children that Santa Claus wouldn’t come this year, and in his suicide note he wrote that they’d be better off if he wasn’t around any more.
We need to talk more. We need to be kinder. And we need to be a country that helps each other when we need it the most.
