SAN JOSE (CA)
Los Angeles Times
By Glenn F. Bunting, Times Staff Writer
SAN JOSE — On the day he was to report for jury duty, Father James Chevedden said the 11 a.m. Mass at the Sacred Heart chapel in Los Gatos before catching a ride downtown.
Shortly after jurors were dismissed on that breezy spring afternoon, security guards at a nearby transit authority building saw something falling from the six-story courthouse parking garage in San Jose.
At 4:48 p.m., paramedics found Chevedden's body face up on a patch of dirt. He died on his 56th birthday.
Although no suicide note was found, authorities say the Jesuit priest took his own life. He had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and he had severely injured himself at least once before.
An obituary in theAbuse Tracker Jesuit News reported that Chevedden jumped to his death May 19 last year "after a long struggle with mental illness."
His fatal leap "was not an act of a person in possession of his rational capacities," wrote Father John Martin, Chevedden's superior at the Sacred Heart Jesuit Center.
But his therapist and distraught family members were puzzled. Chevedden seemed to be functioning well with prescribed medications and regular psychiatric treatment. He was active in the Bay Area, teaching catechism to children, leading Bible study groups and happily studying Judaism, Hebrew and Eastern Christianity.
It wasn't Chevedden's illness that had precipitated his death, they decided; it was something that had happened to him at Sacred Heart.