A Clark County, Nevada, coroner's toxicology report released in September found multiple psychiatric and other drugs in the system of a 34-year-old mother who allegedly shot and killed her 11-year-old daughter on February 15, 2026, at a Las Vegas hotel following a cheer competition. The finding has prompted Citizens Commission on Human Rights International (CCHR) to renew its call for such published toxicology screening in all evidence homicides, attempted homicides, murder-suicides, and mass acts of senseless violence. According to CCHR, this testing is seldom done, leaving investigators and the public without crucial information about whether mind-altering psychiatric drugs were present.
The implications of this omission are significant. Without routine toxicology screening, it is impossible to determine whether psychiatric drugs, or withdrawal from them, played a role in these acts. CCHR has already compiled 145 violent crimes involving people taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs. In five additional cases this year, 12 people were killed, including nine children. Two suspects also died, two were U.S. military veterans, and two were parents who killed their own children. Only the Las Vegas case has published toxicology results.
Jan Eastgate, President of CCHR International, said, "There is a blackout on the evidence that could show whether the drugs were present and how they could influence the suspect's behavior." Since 2004, CCHR has identified 57 drug-regulatory warnings and labeling updates linking some psychiatric drugs to violence, aggression, or hostility; 13 cite homicidal ideation or thoughts of harming others.
The other four cases from 2026, based on published law-enforcement, family, and court accounts, reveal a troubling pattern. In Florida, a 25-year-old man on psychotropic drugs stabbed a 73-year-old woman more than 50 times. In Louisiana, a 31-year-old veteran shot eight children and wounded two adults before being killed by responders; his family reported mental-health struggles treated with medication at a VA hospital. In California, a 32-year-old Navy veteran allegedly beat an Army veteran to death; a family friend said he was medicated. In another California case, a 44-year-old man diagnosed with schizophrenia and prescribed psychiatric drugs stabbed an actor to death; his mother believed he had stopped the medication about a week before, indicating possible withdrawal. None of these four cases have published toxicology.
That gap is why CCHR is urging legislators to sponsor bills modeled on Tennessee Public Chapter 897 (SB 2088/HB 2013), effective July 1, 2026. The law requires toxicology screening for psychiatric drugs when a deceased person is suspected in a mass attack in which the perpetrator tried to kill four or more people. With consent, it also allows tests on a living suspect in specified circumstances. De-identified, HIPAA-compliant results go to a health science center for analysis and recommendations to government. But CCHR wants the mandate to be broader and more public. "The weapon or the body count should not decide whether this evidence is collected," Eastgate said.
CCHR is also concerned about cases in which mothers killed or tried to kill their children after documented mental-health struggles, and authorities have not reported toxicology testing or have not released results. The Las Vegas case is a rare instance in which a coroner published a full psychotropic panel on both mother and child. Another case is the January 24, 2023, Duxbury, Massachusetts, tragedy in which a mother strangled her three children and jumped from a window; her lawyer argued overmedication and drug-induced homicidal and suicidal ideation. A third case is the June 20, 2001, Houston case in which a mother drowned her five children; a science consultant wrote that a combination of drugs contributed to involuntary intoxication and led to murder.
CCHR documents this issue in its report Psychiatric Drugs Create Violence and Suicide, which compiles violent acts by people reported to be taking psychiatric drugs or withdrawing from them, and in its documentary Prescription for Violence. The Violence Prevention Project's U.S. Mass Shooter Database separately found that 24% of mass shooters in its set had been taking psychiatric drugs, though sealed records and sparse toxicology mean that figure is incomplete.
CCHR is calling on every state legislature to require psychiatric-drug toxicology and public, de-identified reporting of results whenever a suspect in a homicide, attempted homicide, or murder-suicide has a known psychiatric history, a current or recent prescription, or an involuntary hold. The five cases of 2026 and the mother cases with no published labs show why Tennessee's rule, limited to mass attacks, does not go far enough. CCHR International is a mental health industry watchdog co-founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz. It has helped enact hundreds of laws protecting patients from abuse and forced treatment, including a 2004 federal law prohibiting schools from forcing children to take psychotropic drugs as a requisite for their education.
