David Winters' Friend Blames Breakdown On Drug Use
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) - We're learning more about the last hours of David Winters' life from a close friend who was in phone contact with him until he took his own life.
Mercedes Klingman, who says he was her best friend, blames Winters' problems on drug use.
Klingman described Winters as a man with a heart of gold whose downfall was his use of drugs.
She said the drugs sent him on a downward spiral he could not recover from.
Pictures of Winters when he was clean show him how Klingman and Monica Kulff want to remember him.
"He was a great guy all around," Klingman said. "It was all the dope. Every little bit of it was the dope."
Both say meth made Winters a different person.
After trying to get him help with no results, they stopped talking to him, but Winters continued reaching out by text.
"You might not want to talk to me, but I can still consider you my oldest, closest and dearest friends, and I love you with all my heart," reads one text Winters sent Klingman.
The silence between friends ended Monday, when Klingman saw news reports of a shooting in St. Louis Park.
"I immediately called him, and he answered," Klingman said.
She said Winters explained how he got from that parking lot in St. Louis Park to Jordan.
"He said he had fallen asleep in the car, and he had the gun on him, and somebody had seen him and turned him in, and he took off, and the cops were shooting at him," Klingman said. "Some guy left his garage open. He ditched the car in the garage. [His wife] Erica came and picked him up."
Klingman said Winters was dropped off at a friend's house, where he has been staying.
It was from inside that house that he called Klingman for help.
"He said that if I came down there to bring him a pack of Marlboro lights, he would come out of the house with me, and we'd walk out together," Klingman said.
That never happened.
She was not allowed to get close to the house.
"He was sitting upstairs on the floor with a pistol in his lap," Klingman said.
SWAT teams eventually moved in, and Winters took his own life.
Klingman wants people to know that Winters was not a bad man, but a good man who let drugs destroy him.
Klingman said she knew Winters was suicidal but hoped he would surrender.
She said he did not want to go back to jail.
He was facing a probation violation that would have sent him back for years.