Former ER actor Vanessa Marquez shot and killed by police

such as sad sad story - could this happen in UK ? - any comments from our USA cousins? I always feel so sad when actors finish up perhaps living alone with alcohol/mental health issues and seem forgotten?

Vanessa Marquez

Re: Former ER actor Vanessa Marquez shot and killed by police

Yes I read about that so sad...it.was a replica gun too so she wasn't a danger...but I read that the police were often at her house so there was history...she also accused George Clooney of assisting in blacklisting her, who knows what goes on with these people.....it's another world.

Re: Former ER actor Vanessa Marquez shot and killed by police

ER is currently being repeated on CBS Drama (Freeview Ch 71). I know that some of the actors in this series have moved on to other things and have won fame elsewhere, but some of the actors, notwithstanding how good they were, seem to have disappeared from television or cinema without trace. Actors like Anthony Edwards, Laura Innez, Noah Wylie etc, etc,

Re: Former ER actor Vanessa Marquez shot and killed by police

Some of these actors find it hard once they have fallen from grace and are out of work. I imagine it's a very tough profession, and for every actor who becomes a household name there are probably thousands who have to find other ways to make a living. Sometimes they never do as was the case with Vanessa.....

Still a very sad situation considering the gun she held was only a replica. I'm sure the policeman didn't know that at the time, or it might have ended differently....

Re: Former ER actor Vanessa Marquez shot and killed by police

Quite true Joe, I never missed an episode when it first came out, I considered it the 'Dogs Wotsits' ....Anthony Edwards (Dr Green) did make an appearance in 'Top Gun' as 'Goose' and I believe I've seen him making up the numbers in the odd western. Noah Wylie has also appeared in something, but I can't remember where I saw him. Most of the others are probably still making a living out of acting, but in smaller roles.....Whatever happened to Dr Benton? Who featured strongly in the series...He's probably stacking supermarket trolley's now....

I don't think I could watch it again though, things are never the same, and I'd like to remember it as it was then....

Re: Former ER actor Vanessa Marquez shot and killed by police

Your post made me curious so I checked. According to IMDB and the actors you mention have all been working. Noah will be starring in a new series called the Romanoffs by the Mad Men producers.

Many actors don't look quite the same in a different role. Julianna Margulies stars in the Good Wife, but looks very different, no curly hair etc. I would have said Anthony Edwards was pretty much typecast as he had such a prominent role, but he has been working.

My favourite was always goran visnjic. He played such a nice character too.

Re: Former ER actor Vanessa Marquez shot and killed by police

It's very sad, but there must be huge pressures that go with fame. Only some are strong enough to deal with the media circus.

I recall the high profile case of Superman actress Margot Kidder, who had a massive breakdown in the mid 90s and dealt with mental health problems all her life. She committed suicide earlier this year.

Re: Former ER actor Vanessa Marquez shot and killed by police

So forget her fame and consider her condition.

In the U.S., "mental" healthcare is often not covered by insurance which is one of the reasons we have a severe shortage of neurological healthcare providers and hospitals. Strangely enough, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest seeded a movement to close down state mental hospitals. The idea was that smaller community hospitals and services would take their places so as not to isolate "mental" healthcare patients in big hospitals, which could sometimes lead to abuse or neglect.

These community centers were never built. That left "mental" healthcare patients on the streets or hidden away at home.

That left paramedics, or more often, Law Enforcement officers who have to deal with these patients. And here in the U.S. if you call emergency services or the police, someone is going to come. Conditioned to a criminal, violent element, who could blame officers for being defensive? The reality is that Law Enforcement deals with millions of encounters daily and there are surprisingly few of these tragic events.

One solution is that most law enforcement agencies have crisis teams. When my daughter had brain inflammation, I went to the police and told them that if we ever had to call them what they would be walking into. I did this after police shot and killed a teen with a similar brain disease when they walked into his North Carolina home and found him about to stab his mother. Someone in the family had called hysterically but did not explain the situation.

Anyway, the officers I spoke with were extraordinarily helpful and appreciative and explained how they would send a crisis team and that would include a medical team, a counselor, and an officer without guns - if I ever got into a bad situation. Her neurologist had warned that she could possibly go into a common state called "cap gras" in which everyone around her would appear to be strangers. In such a state, people can have massive adrenaline rushes making them difficult to manage physically because they are scare out of their wits to suddenly find themselves surrounded by people they think are strangers.

No officer would ever want to shoot an innocent person, especially a sick one. The fact is that every day, law enforcement offers have millions of contacts with the public, and in each one, they don't know whether a person might try to kill someone or them. Split-second decisions have to be made. In 99.9% of the time, they make the right one.

If you have a person who has dementia, Alzheimers, neurological inflammation, brain cancer, seizures, somnambulism, cognitive decline, or impairments, I can't say enough how important it is that you contact law enforcement so they don't walk into a situation that they are pre-progammed to believe is criminal activity (domestic or otherwise).

The other thing is that if people are in conditions like I described, prepare for the worst. Remove every single gun, toy gun, scissors, and knife from reach. I even had to lock up my kitchen prep knives. The last thing I wanted would be a situation like the one that I described.

Never in a million years did I think that the most lovely, intelligent, compassionate, delightfully easy-going girl could be violent or exhibit severely abnormal behavior - but it can happen. In our case it was triggered by strep throat.

We have to take care of people long before a situation like this one happened.