A tale of two deaths: Lives of two mental ill vets end tragically

Submitted by airborne on Fri, 02/08/2008 - 11:04.

Star Community Newspaper
By Lynn Proctor Windle, Staff Writer

In the hours leading up to Pat Ahrens’ death, he waged a desperate attempt to draw attention to what he described as the indifferent way the Veterans Administration treats veterans with mental issues.

Ahrens died Saturday night at a Plano hospital from a heart attack, family members said Monday. Details leading up to Ahrens’ heart attack were not released.

His crusade against the Veteran Affairs hospital began immediately after the death of another veteran, a man whom he had met only days before at the Dallas VA Medical Center where they were both patients in the hospital’s psychiatric ward. Ahrens had found the body of Christopher Nicholas Demopoulos hanging from the second story balcony of a local hotel.

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