ROSS GENERAL HOSPITAL
of Marin County
Kentfield, CA
(Actual facility where suicide occurred is now closed.)

AUGUST 1996 - Sean Jeffrey Milligan, aged 29 with a history of suicidal attempts and bi-polar disorder, was under suicide watch in a room outside the Nurses' Station.  He was placed on Q15, which means he was to be observed once every 15 minutes.  Per his Mother, Karen, his records show he was not observed at that level.  Sean suicided outside the window of his hospital room.  He had the time and privacy to bend the window bars on his third floor hospital room windows outward, creating projections from which he hung himself.  He also had the time and privacy to tear a bedsheet and make a noose for that same purpose.  Sean Milligan hung himself outside his hospital window from the bars he had been able to bend outward.  Staff on the floor below his room - the second floor that housed adolescent patients - saw his body dangling in front of a second floor window at approximately 4 AM.  Per his Mother, none of the staff on his floor saw him, realized what had happened or knew what he had done.  No one knows how long Sean had been deceased when he was found.  Karen filed a wrongful death/medical mapractice lawsuit against Ross General Hospital and settled out-of-court.  

Since Sean's tragic passing, Karen's mantra is:

" If you were to ask me what I came into the World to do,
           I will tell you.  I came to live out loud."
-Emmile Zola

ROSS GENERAL HOSPITAL