Friends stuggle to understand casino suicide

Friday, Jan. 28, 2000 | 9:44 a.m.

Last month, Bell's longtime friend Donnie Pelzer said he confronted his friend. Pelzer said Bell seemed depressed after losing $6,000 or more in two trips to casinos in Detroit and Windsor.

"You can't be going over there dropping $6,000 or $7,000 a night," Pelzer said he told Bell last month. "He told me everything was all right. He said, 'Donnie, I'll call you."'

Pelzer never heard from his 38-year-old friend again.

"He was always a winner," Pelzer told the Detroit Free Press for a story Friday. "For the first time in his life, he lost. And he couldn't handle it."

Wednesday, Bell fatally shot himself at the MotorCity Casino after losing at blackjack in the high-stakes gambling area. A sergeant with the Oak Park Department of Public Safety, Bell's suicide seems inconsistent with how his friends and coworkers have described him in the days after his death.

"This is such a shock to all of us. Nobody - and I mean nobody - around here saw something like this coming," Oak Park Sgt. Chris Martinelli told The Detroit News.

Bell was a day supervisor in the patrol division at the Oak Park Department of Public Safety, a job he obtained after rising through the department's ranks. In 1999, he made more than $75,000 in salary and overtime.

Bell talked about his high-stakes gambling with fellow officers at the department. But Sedric Sawyer, Oak Park's deputy director of public information, said he never thought to worry about his friend.

"I think money was a passionate thing with him. He was proud of his house, his cars ... He measured himself by those things," Sawyer said.

Martinelli said he always considered Bell's occasional trips to the casinos something his friend did for recreation.

"He's gambled for years. But it wasn't like he was compulsive about it," Martinelli said. "Some days, he would come in and say: 'I had a good night at the tables last night.' ... But he never would say what he won or lost."

One possible source of stress in Bell's life was a lawsuit filed last year by a Livonia woman. She claimed Bell fondled her breasts at a restaurant in 1997. Bell had countersued the woman for slander and invasion of privacy, and his attorney said Thursday he doesn't think the suit drove Bell to kill himself.

"He felt she was out to get him," Jeffrey Sherbow told the News. "I couldn't conceive he would take his life over this."

Pelzer said Bell had become more reflective in the last year and talked about having achieved little in life.

"He'd say, 'This ain't nothing,"' Pelzer said. "I kept telling him, 'Solomon, this is something."