John Brodie was a Vermont man who died in an encounter with Brattleboro police in 2006 after neighbors called 9-11. At 36, John was already a Princeton PhD and world-reknowned physicist widely published in scientific journals. He was also a psychiatric abuse survivor, whose non-ordinary mental states were repeatedly met with force in hospitals. On the night of his death, he was not violent or suicidal, but was behaving in a strange way -- knocking on doors at 11pm. Confused neighbors called the police, which escalated a harmless situation into a tragedy. John ran away, terrified of the police, and went into the freezing river.

John's close friend Inez Kochius, a longtime Freedom Center supporter, was working with Freedom Center to try to support and care for John in the months before this tragic event cut John's life short. Inez shares her thoughts and feelings three years afterwards, in a society that has still not learned basic lessons of kindness towards mental difference.

Inez writes "To me John did not accidentally drown, he was driven into the water -- by all of us."

Read the Rutland Herald story about John Brodie.

Go to the Freedom Center page for more about John.

(drawing below by Charlotte Clarke)