Mystery envelops Florida’s central coast as man found slumped on surfboard in lineup with gunshot wound to mouth; no one on beach heard gunshot, no weapon recovered.

Strange things.

A Vero Beach man is in critical condition after being pulled from the water on Thursday morning. The man was found “slumped over his surfboard” on Wabasso Beach, in front of Disney’s Vero Beach Resort on Florida’s central coast.

The man was found to have a gunshot wound to the mouth.

Police are now investigating it as an attempted suicide.

According to Indian River County Sheriff’s Office records, the man, believed to be in sixties, was seen drifting on his board near third reef (about 500 feet out) at approximately 10 a.m. Lifeguards and resort workers brought him to the beach where he was taken to Lawnwood Florida Hospital.

Interviews of people on the beach reveal no one heard a gunshot, and no weapon has been recovered.
It’s a bit of a mystery. The whole of it, I mean.

We can’t divine why this guy put a gun to his face and shouldn’t try. But we can understand his intended place of rest, the offshore refuge, the field where Dora described as all the pains of life―the screaming parents, police, priests, politicians, etc.― being thrown over the falls and leaving us free.

Or maybe Dora’s hyperbolic description is wrong as our attempted suicide victim knew what still awaited back on the sand.

Maybe he was just full and was ready to get up from the life’s table.

I think more of the Stoic philosopher Seneca who asked, “what difference it makes how soon you depart from a place which you must depart from sooner or later?”