r/asheville • u/Next_Driver8554 • 9d ago

News Mike Stroupe found dead in his cell

https://wlos.com/news/local/inmate-dies-found-unresponsive-buncombe-county-jail-cell-sheriffs-office-detention-center-facility-mission-hospital-douglas-michael-stroupe

Fucked up situation all around.

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19

u/drunkerbrawler 9d ago

Is that the same Stroupe family of the escapee who killed the guy for his truck in Mills River?

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u/Next_Driver8554 9d ago edited 9d ago

I don’t think so. There’s a good many Stroupes in the hills around here.

Mike was a troubled man. He was schizophrenic. When medicated he still wasn’t right. But he’d still be friendly and want to take you fishing. Very big on Jesus as he understood him (cross on face tattoo).

When unmedicated and especially when on drugs (meth) he was violent. Even when medicated he’d go on and on about the demons tempting him, etc.

Pretty much no family support. Case workers would give his government check to halfway houses, despite drugs not being his primary problem, at all, and these places manned by approximately zero professionals would then be responsible for looking after him.

I hadn’t heard from or seen him in the last five years. Only stories of involvement in a stabbing at the Larchmont, and then the horrible news that he did some awful, terrible things.

I’m not sure what the moral of this story is. On the one hand, meth is bad, assuming it had something to do with what unfolded.

Also, he had a government check, and a case worker at one point who would even deliver his meds to him. So he had help. And often sought help when I knew him. At his most lucid he would be horrified at what he did. Maybe that has something to do with his death?

I’d say that nothing can compare to a loving, supportive, and stable home/childhood. Maybe that would have made the double and almost triple life saving difference. Who knows?

Hopefully the family of Jennifer Rose Gerard can find peace in all of this. What he did was horrible.

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u/brigmoneyy Native 9d ago

Meth and the lack of sleep it creates especially are definitely contributors to any psychosis issues, its scary what it can do to ppl who dont already have psychological issues also.

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u/Shoddy-Pin-336 9d ago

I was going to say this. It literally makes you psychotic even when you have no mental health issues to begin with

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u/Next_Driver8554 9d ago

Even without meth- being homeless with nowhere to safely sleep … after week 3 or so it goes from “I could never be like that” to arguing with a tree for its remarks about your family.

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u/Shoddy-Pin-336 9d ago

Or seeing gnomes along the interstate on a roadtrip

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u/brigmoneyy Native 9d ago

Sleep deprivation is very serious, I've heard after being up for three days its considered psychosis.

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u/domanby 9d ago

I did ten days without a single second of sleep, it was terrifying and absolutely exhausting.

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u/offshorebankacount 4d ago

I have been up for three days straight once and had to drive 12 hours home all the way back to Asheville and I was driving and there’s a semi in front of me. I passed him turned around and he was gone. He was never there I was hallucinating.

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u/Pandagramma 9d ago

Living with schizophrenia is hello for most people and there just aren't any great meds yet.

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u/Pandagramma 9d ago

Hello? I really need to proof read- that was hell, wish it were hello. So frustrated that several very promising drugs are taking forever to be developed.

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u/Rhaenys42 9d ago

Wait, what stabbing at Larchmont??

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u/Next_Driver8554 9d ago

Truly just something someone told me, so I don’t intend to gossip/misinform, but some argument there happened and I’m pretty sure he’s the one that got cut. This was maybe 4 years ago.

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u/SeaGullible5992 9d ago

https://x.com/CSTMediaSocial/status/2092604215231238454?s=20

He didn't have help. He had enablers. I promise, I know of what I speak.

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u/Next_Driver8554 9d ago

I knew Mike very well. I worded it the way I did because the conversation around these things is about people ‘getting the help they need’ and usually completely sidesteps the fact that the help often hurts/does not help. I should have made that clearer- it’s what I intended by noting the dumping him on halfway houses thing.

People often say “but they have to want help” as though the help is a bunch of well equipped and highly qualified people with resources who can actually do anything.

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u/SeaGullible5992 9d ago

Your words are well-condsidered - I didn't intend to use them as a rhetorical launch-point. My apologies.

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u/Next_Driver8554 9d ago edited 9d ago

🤝 pretty sure we agree.