Many modern cases that pre-date the formal recognition of the phenomenon have been identified or speculated by historians as matching the pattern now known as suicide by cop . According to authors Mark Lindsay and David Lester , Houston McCoy , one of the two Austin Police Department officers who shot and killed Charles Whitman , the " Texas Tower Sniper " , believed that Whitman could have shot him and fellow officer Ramiro Martinez , but " he was waiting for them , and wanted to be shot . " The 1976 death of Mal Evans , road manager , assistant , and a friend of The Beatles , who aimed an air gun at police and refused to put it down , was theorized as a possible example of this phenomenon . Some historians believe that Giuseppe Zangara , the man who killed Chicago mayor Anton Cermak in a possible attempt to assassinate then President-Elect Franklin D. Roosevelt , might have been attempting suicide by police
Texas Tower Sniper
University of Texas tower shooting
Suicide by cop