When Regina Moore thinks of her late husband, she thinks of his dedication to fighting for racial justice.
“He was passionate about history and uplifting people of color, not just Black people, but he was passionate about addressing injustice in the world on many different platforms,” Moore said.
Conrad Moore Jr., also known as “Thulani” by his friends and colleagues, worked as an antiracism educator with a nonprofit organization called Roots of Justice that provides workshops on combating racism.
On top of devoting his life to racial justice, he was also a Marine Corps veteran and served during the Vietnam war. Moore said throughout their 16-year marriage, Conrad had primarily received his medical care from the U.S Department of Veteran Affairs.
Moore said she was blindsided when she was informed that her husband had died at the Atlanta VA medical center on Feb. 17. According to records from the DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s Office, Moore died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound outside of the center’s emergency room. He was 71.
Exactly one month after Moore’s death, another shooting incident occurred at a different VA clinic in Georgia. On March 17, a social worker named Nicholas Crews, 34, was shot by a VA patient, Lawrence Michels, who was reportedly seeking mental health treatment at the Pickens County VA clinic in Jasper, Georgia.
Michels, 51, was shot and killed by police at the time of the incident and Crews died a day later from his injuries. A family representative for the Crews family, Ruth Malhotra, told Capital B Atlanta that Crews’ wife, Alyssa, had recently given birth to their third child.
“Nic lived a life marked by compassion, courage, and calling,” his wife said in a statement. “He believed deeply in showing up for people in their hardest moments, and he did so with humility, kindness, and unwavering faith.”
Nurses and veterans say that these incidents are the byproduct of a broken system as the VA cut thousands of vacant medical staff positions across its department over the past year. Nurses and vets told Capital B Atlanta that they’ve been experiencing long wait times and a decrease in the quality of medical care at VA clinics as a result of staffing shortages.
The state’s investigation into the Pickens VA shooting is ongoing, and Moore’s family is still trying to understand the motive for his death. But some nurses and vets say delays in accessing care and the decreased quality of care can create an environment where veterans can slip through the cracks, and those experiencing mental health crises can be missed.
“We are experiencing a severe staffing crisis at our facility, where we have far too few nurses and not enough ancillary staff to respond as quickly as we need to our veteran’s needs,” said Florence Uzuegbunam, a nurse practitioner and National Nurses United chief nurse representative, in a statement prior to a vigil held for Crews in March.
“When we cut resources for veterans, we see an increase in frustration, untreated mental and physical illness. We don’t know what happened in this case, but we know that when our patients go without treatment, we see negative and even tragic outcomes,” Uzuegbunam continued.
Ed Anderson, a 71-year-old Air Force veteran, said the VA staffing cuts are concerning to him as someone who was “saved” by the department’s mental health services many years ago.
“I know of two other vets here within the last 15 years that I knew personally that took their own lives, so it’s something that has been in my heart and on my mind as I continue to work with vets,” said Anderson, a DeKalb County resident. “I think the value of VA mental health care is drastically understated, and the cuts that are happening at the VA directly impact the quality of care that veterans receive.”
When asked about the two shootings, Chanel Cook, the chief of communications for the Atlanta VA health system, said in a statement: “Patient, staff and visitor safety are top priorities at VA, and all VA facilities undergo regular security assessments.”
But Anderson said he believes more could have been done to prevent these two tragedies.
“If you go to the Atlanta VA, you have to walk through a magnetometer, and there are VA police at the doors … at some of these clinics, you don’t have that same level of security,” he said. “They definitely didn’t have it up in Jasper a couple months ago.
“I hate to say it, a lot of it just comes back to staffing and money. … The VA needs to be more efficient and that efficiency can be found without releasing all of the people that they have released.”
Vets and nurses impacted by staff shortage
VA officials have described the reductions as the result of normal attrition, early retirements, and a federal hiring freeze, according to a press release.
A report by The New York Times cites that the VA got rid of thousands of medical positions that were vacant after the department’s wave of resignations and retirements last year. The Times reported that the VA chose not to hire replacements for around 14,400 unfilled medical staff vacancies, including slots for more than 1,500 physicians and 4,900 nurses.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, between January and December 2025, the VA lost nearly 28,000 employees, including a loss of more than 1,000 employees in Georgia.
Lyn Brown, a mental health nurse and member of National Nurses United, said that the VA is not filling empty roles in her division of inpatient mental health care, making conditions more difficult for the remaining staff members in Atlanta.
“We’ve had a supply that has dwindled and they’re not replenishing staff yet. The things that are not able to get done, the things like safety and veteran care, have suffered tremendously,” Brown said.
A mental health employee with the Atlanta VA health system, who wished to remain anonymous over fears of retaliation from the VA, told Capital B Atlanta that in the past month one of her supervisors stepped down and cited the working conditions as one of their main reasons for leaving.
Nurses and vets say that the high demand for care and the staff shortages have led to long wait times.
According to data from Common Defense, a progressive veterans group, the wait times for mental health care for new patients at the Atlanta VA is currently 42 days, and 50 days at the Pickens County VA clinic as of May 5. Common Defense says the VA’s target wait time is 20 days for mental health care.
“What’s going to happen to you in 50 days? With whatever crisis you’re having, you’re going to go downhill fast,” Brown said.
“The key is enough staff to provide proper care. … A neglected psychiatric crisis mixed with displaced anger makes for impulsive negative decisions that can much more easily be fatal for that patient, others around that patient, or the innocent people at the VA facility where that patient was getting care.”
Anderson, who is an organizer for Common Defense, said that long wait times are a troubling issue for many veterans seeking mental health care at the VA.
“I just don’t understand the logic of reducing and firing people in that arena, when that is one of the most sought after needs of veterans, particularly those who have experienced PTSD and sexual trauma and other conditions,” said Anderson.
“I know veterans my age, Vietnam era veterans who are just now coming to realize their problems are post traumatic from Vietnam, yet they’re getting turned away. That’s part of the long wait times that we’re seeing because of the number of vets, particularly older vets, that are now turning to the VA for service.”
Peter Kasperowicz, a spokesman for the VA, told Capital B Atlanta in an email that based on the department’s data, as of May 7, the wait time at the Atlanta VA for new mental health patients is 33 days and seven days for established patients. At the Pickens County VA he said the wait time is six days for established patients. The department doesn’t have a wait time estimate available for new mental health patients at the Pickens County VA.
Finding answers in grief
Regina Moore said Conrad received mental health services from the VA prior to their marriage. Throughout their marriage and right before his death, she said her husband hadn’t spoken to her about any struggles with his mental health. He did not share with her if he was receiving mental health care from the VA.
While nothing seemed abnormal with her husband mentally, she said, he had been struggling physically. He sought medical care at the VA, she said, but after various appointments, the VA told him that they couldn’t detect any issues and referred him to the Emory Healthcare System for more care.
She said Emory discovered that Conrad had a blockage in his heart and he underwent heart bypass surgery in 2024.
“This is after several trips and them telling him, ‘There’s nothing. We don’t see anything’” Moore said. “It turned out there was something. It was very serious.”
She said that although the surgery was successful, he was still suffering from some pain afterward.
The Atlanta VA refused to share records about Conrad’s medical and mental health care with Capital B Atlanta, citing that his medical records are protected by privacy laws.
While his family has the capability to access those records to uncover more information about his care at the VA, Moore said looking further into if the VA had any role in Conrad’s death hadn’t crossed her mind in the months following his death.
She said regardless of any wrongdoing or negligence they may or may not find in the future, she believes the whole VA system needs a “revamp.”
“Lack of VA services is like the tip of the iceberg. There’s a lot that veterans should be getting that they don’t get on a regular basis, just due to the fact that they’ve made the sacrifices that they made,” Moore said. “And some of them didn’t have a choice about it. You know, Vietnam-era veterans, some of them were drafted. There’s no reason why they should not be getting anything they need, after the sacrifices they made.”
Moore said that the most challenging aspect of losing her husband is the fact that their 15-year-old daughter is suffering the loss of a parent.
Conrad’s cousin, Dan Moore Jr., the owner of the APEX Museum in downtown Atlanta, said Conrad worked as a tour guide at the museum in the last year of his life and used his knowledge about systemic racism to help the museum.
“His mission was to talk about peace and justice and to abolish inequality as much as possible,” Moore said. “I miss him. He came right behind my father who passed away two years ago. But now I look at it this way, I see that we now have another ancestor looking over our family and this institution.”
This story has been updated.
