With his wife, Jennifer Hensel, he created the Avielle Foundation to support research into brain abnormalities that could be linked to violent behavior. In this endeavor, he stressed mental health education and compassion.
“Compassion is the ability to feel somebody else’s suffering, to empathize,” Richman, a neuroscientist, said in a video for the foundation. “But most importantly, it’s the hope that you can do something to alleviate that suffering.”
On Monday, Richman, 49, was found dead in an apparent suicide in the Newtown, Connecticut, building where the Avielle Foundation had an office, local police said. His death was all the more shocking given the scope of his work, community members said.
“There are no words to describe the tragic weight of today’s news,” Dan Rosenthal, the Newtown first selectman, said in a statement. “Jeremy Richman was a loving husband, father and friend to many.”
Police were called to Edmond Town Hall, a movie theater and event space that also rented offices and meeting rooms, at about 7 a.m. by contractors who were working there, said Lt. Aaron Bahamonde of the Newtown Police Department.
Upon arriving, police found a note left by Richman. Bahamonde did not disclose what the note said.
Police and the state’s medical examiner’s office were investigating the death, Bahamonde said.
Richman’s death came more than six years after a gunman stormed Sandy Hook Elementary School, killing Avielle and 25 other people, before turning the gun on himself. The massacre, on Dec. 14, 2012, thrust Newtown into the caustic national debates on gun violence, mental health and Second Amendment rights.
Some of the police officers who reported to Edmond Town Hall on Monday had responded to the school shooting, Bahamonde said.
“This is devastating to our community,” Bahamonde said. “I can’t stress that enough.”
Richman had left his job at a pharmaceutical company to focus on the foundation. He began hosting discussions and speaking at academic events about brain health and violence.
Last week, he was the keynote speaker at a summit at Florida Atlantic University, where he spoke about research that was geared toward helping people identify the symptoms of those in crisis and to support people at risk of harming themselves or others.
As the Avielle Foundation pursued grants to encourage such research, Richman spoke often with lawmakers to discuss the nonprofit’s findings and push for action.
Sen. Christopher S. Murphy, D-Conn., who is a powerful voice against gun violence, said he was devastated and heartbroken by Richman’s death. The two became close friends, Murphy said, and Richman regularly briefed staff members on Capitol Hill about his foundation’s work.
They last met in the senator’s Washington office two weeks ago.
“He seemed as excited about his work as I’d ever seen him, which makes the morning’s news so unthinkable,” Murphy said in an interview Monday.
Richman earned a doctorate in pharmacology and toxicology from the University of Arizona in 1998. He also received a bachelor’s degree in molecular and cellular biology from the university in 1992.
Before starting the Avielle Foundation, he worked in drug discovery for pharmaceutical companies in California and Connecticut.
He also had an appointment as a faculty lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. In 2016, Yale’s Department of Psychiatry honored Richman and Hensel with its Research Advocacy Award.
Richman and Hensel were among the Sandy Hook families who had filed lawsuits against conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the host of Infowars, a radio show and website. Jones has said that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax.
The lawsuit involving Richman and Hensel alleges that Jones embarked on a campaign of “abusive and outrageous false statements in which Jones and the other defendants have developed, amplified and perpetuated claims that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged and that the 26 families who lost loved ones that day are paid actors who faked their relatives’ deaths.”
The news of Richman’s death came shortly after two students who survived last year’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida, also died in apparent suicides.
In response to Richman’s death, the town of Newtown, the Police Department and the school system were planning to bring in mental health professionals to help the community grieve, Bahamonde said.
In addition to his wife, Richman is survived by two children, Imogen and Owen.
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If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK). You can find a list of additional resources at SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.