Heartbroken dad Ian Sandywell sent his son Ben a chilling text message saying: “Delete me out of your life please. I’m going to hang myself” before taking his own life.
Daily Mail reported that after receiving the notice, the father was so tormented by financial stress that he decided to hang himself to death. The Child Support Agency’s notice demanded around $12,000 in backdated maintenance payments for his son.
Hours before his death, the 45-year-old dad was said to have been ‘crying and upset’ after receiving the order and texting his son.
Hours later the car salesman’s wife Jo-ann Balsamo, 41, found him dead in their garage when she returned home from work. Balsamo said he had called her at 12:30 p.m. asking about the child support.
“He was upset, He was crying. He said he was concerned about the amount of money they wanted on a monthly basis, which was ($800). It was stressful for him.”
“I was surprised how upset he was. We had letters before and he was going to go through the appeals process. By the end of the conversation he had calmed down and we said goodbye normally,” Balsamo said.
Balsamo expressed that the demanding notice from the government might have been the ultimate pressure that led his husband to take his own life. He had been paying child support for 13 years.
Sandywell had been engulfed in a dispute with his former wife Sharon Stroynowski, 46, for over two years after their 2001 divorce, an inquest at Stafford Coroners Court heard.
Balsamo also explained that the Child Support Agency had begun sending out more and more letters to Sandywell warning him that there were a lot of outstanding payments from him to be made to Ben as he was growing up.
The emergency services were contacted by Balsamo after she discovered the boy, but they were too late and Sandywell was pronounced dead at the scene.
Sources: OpposingViews, Mirror, Daily Mail
