On Labor Day, September 3, 1990, Sergeant Robert Preston Palmer, 38, of the Elsmere Police Department was critically wounded at his home on Seneca Trail during an unprovoked attack by John Bundy, the ex-husband of Palmer’s wife, Barbara. Bundy arrived armed with a .38-caliber revolver and, according to reports, had a documented history of schizophrenia and prior commitment to Veterans Administration hospitals after a 1983 suicide attempt.

Bundy shot Palmer’s two young children, four-year-old Casey and three-year-old Robyn. Palmer engaged Bundy in a gunfight and fatally wounded him, but not before Palmer himself was shot in the chest and upper right leg, suffering a collapsed lung and other severe internal injuries. Neighbors called police; Bundy and Casey were already dead at the scene, and Robyn died later in her mother’s arms. Palmer was taken to University of Cincinnati Medical Center, later transferred to a Hershey, Pennsylvania facility for an experimental artificial lung implant, and died from his injuries on September 25, 1990.

No arrests were made because the assailant was killed at the scene. Why was Bundy released from VA care earlier in 1990 and allowed to obtain the firearm used in this attack?