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Yesterday, if you recall, SFist told you about 64-year-old Yvette Harden, the East Bay women who "fatally shot her handicapped daughter at an East Oakland skilled nursing facility Sunday night then killed herself with the same gun."
At first, no suicide note was found at the scene to explain why Harden did what she did.
This morning, however, SFist received an email from ABC 7's Dan Noyes, telling us that he had received an letter "marked 'urgent' from a viewer in Livermore." The piece of mail was from Harden; it was her suicide note, sent to Noyes a few days before the murder-suicide.
Noyes details what was in the letter. Here's a piece of Harden's reason:
For five pages, Diana Harden described the fifteen-year ordeal she and her daughter endured. Yvette Harden became a quadriplegic and suffered brain injuries in a car accident when she was 28. Her mother admitted she was a difficult patient, but says nursing home workers abused her. Yvette bounced from one nursing home to the next; Diana tried to bring her home and care for her, but the job proved to be too difficult. She finally sent her to Oakland Springs Health Center on 10th Avenue.Yvette lived there for six years, but Diana wrote that her daughter suffered abuse -- the nurses "tell her she's 'a fat pig' and that they 'hate taking care of her' and they wash her in the shower 'like a car, real hard', then they turn the cold water on to punish her. When she screams, they turn it back before the charge nurse can get there."
We asked Noyes what he felt when he connected his letter with the murder-suicide. He tells us:
This is how it often works for me. When you're on deadline, you don't really have time to think much about what's happening -- you're jamming to gather as many facts and talk to the right people for the story. I got the letter @3pm and had to do the story for the top of the six. A tremendous sadness hit me after the show. There's a lot of detail in the letter's five pages and it was a horrible, stressful fifteen years for Diana Harden and her daughter, Yvette. Diana wrote that Yvette had been asking for two years to end it all, and that Yvette asked her to contact me to tell the story. I have to say I take that responsibility seriously. We're following up on it right now.
Check out iteamblog for the whole story
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damn that is really sad.