Man Kills Himself in N.C. Newspaper's Parking Lot

By: Graham Webster A North Carolina man whose arrest on a misdemeanor computer crime was the subject of a front-page story in The Gaston Gazette Wednesday killed himself in the newspaper's Gastonia, N.C., parking lot yesterday.

Jon Paul Bumgardner, 41, ran hoses from his truck's exhaust pipe through the rear window of his Ford Ranger truck, allowing carbon monoxide fumes to fill the cab.

"I think we all feel that it's a regrettable incident but don't really feel responsibility for it," Duane K. McCallister, the Gazette's publisher, told E&P. "Nor should we, really."

McCallister said the paper was "only reporting on a crime that he had been charged with," and that it did so with integrity.

"You can't be responsible for other people's reactions to things that you publish," McCallister told E&P. "But, boy, it sure does remind us that we have to be accurate and we have to be responsible, which I think we were."

"I'm only guessing that he picked this location because the paper ran the story about him," Gastonia Police Sgt. Jimmy West told reporters. Police have not found a note or anything else indicating Bumgardner's motive.

Gazette police reporter Adam Linhardt told reporters he visited Bumgardner before the article ran and that he declined to comment. He said Bumgardner never contacted him after that.

"The reporter actually went to [Bumgardner's] house, and he asked him to leave," McCallister told E&P. The newspaper assigned another reporter to cover the suicide.

On Monday, Bumgardner was charged with misdemeanor computer trespass, apparently his first arrest. Police alleged that on Feb. 12 he altered his former employer's Web site so that visitors would be directed to a site with the phrase "gotohell." Bumgardner left his job as a computer engineer with Encompass Computer Solutions in January. He had not been fired or asked to leave, company president Paul Little said.

The Gazette's story, headlined "Police charge man with computer trespass," ran at the bottom of the front page with a small headshot of Bumgardner, according to the paper's Web site.

Publisher McCallister told reporters he "would expect and hope" Linhardt would recognize he was not responsible for Bumgardner's death.

A local TV station, WSOC-TV Channel 9, aired a similar story Monday about the arrest.

The man who found Bumgardner, Roger Self, had also read the Gazette story. "I had noticed that story because I'm having a Web site designed for my business," he said. "I thought, 'That's something companies need to do is secure their access codes.'"

Bumgardner's vehicle was parked facing the Gaston Gazette building, about 50 yards from the front door.