Distraught over the re-election of President George W. Bush, a Georgia man traveled to New York City, went to Ground Zero and killed himself with a shotgun blast, police said yesterday.
The suicide victim, Andrew Veal, 25, was discovered just before 8 a.m. yesterday when a worker for the Millennium Hotel looking at Ground Zero from an upper floor saw a man lying atop the concrete structure through which the 1 and 9 subway lines run.
The worker, thinking the man was sleeping, alerted colleagues and the Port Authority police were notified.
But when they got to Veal's body, they realized he had killed himself with a shot to the head from a .12-gauge shotgun.
No suicide note was found, but according to a Port Authority police source, family members said Veal, a registered Democrat, was despondent over Bush's defeat of Sen. John Kerry. A second source said Veal, who lived in Athens, Ga., and worked for the University of Georgia, was also adamantly opposed to the war in Iraq.