Judge Stephen Yekel, 74, was found dead on Tuesday in his own courtroom

Summary

Judge Stephen Yekel, 74, died by suicide in his courtroom on his last day in office after losing a re-election bid.

He was found Tuesday morning at Effingham County State Courthouse, with investigators believing the incident occurred late Monday or early Tuesday.

Yekel, appointed in 2022, had recently attempted to resign but was denied by Governor Brian Kemp.

He was also facing a wrongful termination lawsuit from a former court employee.

  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
    73·
    5 days ago

    He did it in the courtroom, as in, his place of employment. You don’t know what others are going through, and it’s possible people could read this and choose to go out like this at their own job instead of at home or someplace else. Or maybe they’ll see someone who ended it all at the peak and somehow think that means it’s a non-terrible idea.

    Or maybe nothing will happen. I don’t know, what I do know is it’s not cool to make fun of someone who was likely suffering from mental distress/sickness, especially while their family is still grieving. That’s a dick move, even if there’s little chance of copy cats.

    A little empathy goes a long way. What we should take away from this is that mental illness can affect everyone, and we never know what others are going through, so we should always treat others like they’re going through something really hard (and we’ll probably be right more than we’d like to know).