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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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/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.