Trey Pennington, a 46-year-old father of six who made a name for himself in online marketing and social media, shot himself in the stomach in a church parking lot in Greenville, SC, ending his life and shocking fans.
Trey was facing divorce, and as a father of six who was very close to his family, must have been under a tremendous amount of pressure. Information concerning the suicide is sketchy, and it appears that a restraining order may have been involved, as the suicide was precipitated by a police standoff, as is so often the case in these events.
Unfortunately, the news affiliate WYFF 4 (wyff4.com) has erased the only article describing the events, which supposedly mentioned what looks like a no-contact order.
Divorce is stressful enough without police involvement, but for fathers, the idea of armed men standing between them and their families is often too much to bear. One possible solution to these senseless tragedies would be to demilitarize the divorce process, and, rather than start off by denying fathers access to children (at gunpoint) for some period of time, guarantee them time with their children at the first ex-parte hearing. If a wife does not want to see her husband, that’s fine, but the children should not be included in any such order unless he is demonstrably an imminent threat to them.
A man who loses his children suddenly and senselessly can be a very serious danger to himself; there is probably little that can guarantee a consistent trickle of tragedies more certainly than contemporary separation procedures.
