Man's bipolar disorder led to standoff

For three weeks, Donald Rice organized guns, swords, supplies and equipment in the workshop outside his Churchville home, grimly preparing for a showdown.
“I love you Sherry but something is calling me to the mountains,” Rice, 49, wrote about a month earlier in a note to his wife before venturing to a hilltop gazebo above his family home in Bath County. “Please don’t call the police or it could get ugly.”
After reading the note, Sherry Rice, 44, spoke to her husband on a cell phone, talking him out of taking his own life and persuading him to return home. But, anticipating disaster, she pleaded in the succeeding weeks for authorities to help.
It was all futile.
When Donald Rice returned Wednesday to the gazebo, his mind was set and his course fixed.
He set fire to the two-story farmhouse where he had once lived with his parents, then retreated to the gazebo, where he squeezed off at least two shots at authorities. With hoardes of police, SWAT teams and federal agents swarming over the 300-acre family spread, seven hours into a standoff, Rice killed himself with a lone gunshot.
For Rice’s grieving wife, the outcome is a reminder that despite mental health reform having moved to the political forefront in the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy, the system remains deeply flawed. Sherry Rice said she called the local Community Service Board as well as area police departments, hoping to have her husband hospitalized.
“They said they couldn’t do anything until he committed a crime,” she said. “I think about that guy at Virginia Tech. He must have been in such intense pain. My husband never wanted to hurt anybody but himself, but the system failed him, too.”
Broader guidelines for involuntary hospitalization of the mentally ill, signed into law earlier this month as part of the series of reforms in the wake of Seung-Hui Cho’s rampage, go into effect July 1. Under the new law, if “there exists a substantial likelihood” a person might cause serious physical harm to themselves or others they can be committed to an institution. The current guideline, “imminent danger,” is much more difficult to prove, mental health professionals say.
Authorities were well aware of Rice’s mental health struggles, said Maj. Richard Chestnut, chief deputy of the Bath County Sheriff’s Department. Rice had a history of retreating to the gazebo, sometimes for a week at a time. A Massachusetts man staying at the Rice family farmhouse — which has been rented to vacationers in recent years — warned police about a cache of weapons in the gazebo. Still, police planned on leaving Rice alone.
When the farmhouse went up in flames, the sheriff’s department decided to make sure Rice had no plans of harming the firefighters at work below. As deputies drove up the road leading to gazebo, Rice fired at their vehicle twice, Chestnut said.
Friends describe Donald Rice as a creative, generous person tortured by a psychological disorder that ultimately overpowered him. Hurting others, they say, was never his intention.
“Don was not this terrible, evil person that was out to kill people,” said Paul Rimel, 49, who has known Rice since the two attended Robert E. Lee High School together. “It was just the sickness, the illness, that finally he couldn’t cope with anymore.”
Rice suffered from a particularly severe case of bipolar disorder, Rimel said. Periods of intense elation, known as manic episodes, alternated with stretches of unfathomably deep depression. It was sometimes difficult to predict exactly where his friend would be in the ongoing cycle of emotional highs and lows, Rimel said.
This is typical of bipolar disorder, sometimes referred to as manic depression, said Susan Frushour, a social worker with 37 years of experience currently serving as the emergency manager and disaster planner at Western State Hospital. The disease — caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain — affects at least 2 million Americans.
“You never know quite how to approach someone if they’re not receiving treatment, because you don’t know if they’re seeing through the lens of their mania or their depression,” Frushour said.
Treatment options have improved dramatically over the last 30 years, she said, with the development of new forms of increasingly effective medication. But the roller-coaster-like nature of bipolar disorder can make patients hesitant to take them, she said. The manic “highs” are sometimes difficult to relinquish, she said.
“It’s so much energy, a creative burst of energy,” she said. “We’ll talk to authors, artists, songwriters — sometimes their most creative moods come when they’re manic. That creates a temptation to not comply with their medication.”
Sherry Rice said she tried to persuade her husband to take his medication but he refused, despite the fact that his depressive periods grew longer and more intense as he aged.
“On the drugs, he had no feeling,” she said. “It made him feel dead inside.”
Donald Rice was an expert knife maker who would craft elaborate, inlaid swords and axes — some inspired by favorite books or movies such as “The Lord of the Rings” or “Conan the Barbarian,” Sherry Rice said. He was also an amateur inventor and skilled photographer. He loved the outdoors, animals, nature. He was intensely spiritual and extremely intelligent, Sherry Rice said.
“He was so talented. If he had been a normally functioning human being, he would have been a fighter pilot or something incredible — he was something incredible,” Sherry Rice said. “But he just could not function normally from day to day.”