Man who shot wife at counseling held on $5 million bail (didn't like what he heard)

[depakid]

A Lakewood man who police say shot and killed his wife Wednesday at a Federal Way church is being held on $5 million bail, and is expected to be charged by Monday.

The man, 41, shot his wife during a counseling session about 5:45 p.m.

The counselor told a detective "that he had been conducting a couples counseling session when the suspect … stood up and began to leave the room. He then turned and pointed a handgun at the victim. … As (she) began to scream (her husband) continued to point the gun at her and told (the counselor) not to move and pointed the gun at him as well."

The woman was hit at least three times her torso. The husband called 911 and told a dispatcher that he had shot his wife and that he had placed the gun on the hood of his truck, according to a probable cause statement. He then told the dispatcher he was lying on the ground.

The woman, 38, was rushed from the church in the 2400 block of South 320th Street to Harborview Medical Center where she died. Seattlepi.com is not naming the man because he hasn't been charged or the victim because they shared a last name.

A day care was operating inside the church during the shooting, and parishioners arriving for a soup dinner were met by homicide detectives, our news partner, KOMO/4 reported. "The church is a place of hope, and to someone driven to this degree, this extreme ... we just pray for everybody that was inside the building that was connected with this thing," parishioner Stan Stenersen told the station.

More: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/417007_church19.html

[hex29a]

1. In other news: Victim not shot, beaten to death

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/20/AR2010032003285.html

[Sinistrous]

3. Delete

[Pavulon]

2. wow, a crime. Let me just give up my rights. right now

how do I surrender a right online?? Again, has nothing to do with me. Some asshole got drunk last night on fosters ( a shitty beer) and killed someone. Killed them just as dead as this lady. Lets just ban beer, then everything will be A OK.

Please.

[shadowrider]

4. Churchs are "Firearms Free Zones" (Target rich environments)

The shooter broke the law by taking one in in the first place. That law worked real well, didn't it. A bad guy, intent on harm, will ignore all laws preventing him/her from carrying out that harm. Law abiding citizens have no way to protect themselves in these instances.

[Vinnie From Indy]

5. Yeah, I guess your right

It would have been much better if all three had been armed. They each could have dove behind something and began spraying the room with as much fire as their trigger fingers and magazines could bear. When the church group got there, they could have joined the melee as well with their firearms. Maybe in the future the pastor and other employees at the church could carefully hide weapons in ordinary looking objects like large candlesticks on either side of the altar that are really pump action, sawed-off shotguns ready at a moments notice. Maybe the church could install Kevlar seat cushions and backrests on all the pews just to give members a fighting chance to squeeze off a few rounds before getting hit by ricochet or shrapnel. Of course bad guys will soon adapt to the counter-measure by deploying flame throwers or poison gas.

Where does it end?

[shadowrider]

6. So it's morally superior to be dead

By not defending yourself. NO ONE has suggested everyone start blasting away and you ignore my statement that the bad guy broke the law by taking a gun into a church. The law didn't help and this law-abiding lady paid the price.

To suggest it should have turned into an O.K. Coral is taking anti-gun hyperbole to another level.

[Vinnie From Indy]

7. It's just the booze talkin'

Cheers!
:)

[east texas lib]

25. So it's morally superior to be dead...

Only if you're Jesus or Kurt Cobain.}(

[paulsby]

30. he did NOT break the law by taking it into a church

WA state has NO law prohibiting firearms in church

research BEFORE you post.

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=9.41.300

[eqfan592]

8. I dunno, given that situations like your describing primarily exist in your little fantasy world...

...where it ends is somewhat up to you. Seriously, exactly how many instances of what you're describing have you actually come across? Take a look at the states that allow carry inside of churches, and find me examples of them if you please.

When are people going to learn that that we shouldn't base public policy on some persons (who's ignorant of the subject matter, mainly defense with a firearm) conjured up version of a worst case scenario?

[depakid]

9. The unintentional irony (and projection) with some folks never fails to crack me up

Next, you'll be waning to have your guns at the daycare... oh wait.

There WAS a daycare on the premises.

[eqfan592]

13. Ohhh, depakid, you really zinged me there!

My will and defiance crumble in the face of your OBVIOUSLY morally and intellectually superior arguments! :sarcasm:

[Euromutt]

23. Or he would have done, were it not for the fact...

...that he wasn't actually responding to anything you said, but rather, to an opinion he attributed to you.

There's no law to stop anyone carrying in a church or a day care center in Washington state, incidentally.

[friendly_iconoclast]

24. FINALLY you have realized that his reposts of such events illustrate the problem of Yanks with guns

However, when others repost media accounts of Australians Behaving Badly, they are only reflecting isolated incidents
that are in no way an indictment of Australia's fair society as a whole.

Glad I could help clear that up.

[PavePusher]

14. Can you provide evidence of an incident like the one in your fevered imagination? n/t

[Vinnie From Indy]

16. no

But, then again, I was not making any profound policy statement on the 2nd ammendment either. I was simply imagining this situation occuring in a world where everyone was armed because they were terrified of all the other armed people. I got the idea after reading another post on the gun forum about two otherwise sane guys prowling their neighborhood looking for evildoers vandalizing mailboxes and ended up blasting away at each other with one guy getting paralyzed from the chest down and the other up on attempted murder charges. I think that situation is in line with my, admittedly, fantastic tale of the Shootout at Our Mother of the Perpetual Ammo Supply Church and Counseling Center.

[Walk away]

18. Up in heaven where the entire congregation fly around flapping their wings...

and sing the second amendment in angelic harmony ad infinitum. O8) :sarcasm:

[Euromutt]

11. Not in Washington

There's no statute prohibiting the carrying of firearms in churches in this state. The church can prohibit firearms on its property, tell you to leave if you're found to be carrying, and have you arrested for trespassing if you refuse to comply, but that's about it.

[shadowrider]

12. My mistake as most state law prohibits carrying in churches

But I admit I don't keep up with all 50 states.

[PavePusher]

15. Be careful with the "most states" claim.

Very often, it isn't true.

http://www.handgunlaw.us/

[shadowrider]

17. I fall and beg for mercy..:)

[PavePusher]

27. Nothing I haven't done once or twice... a day. n/t

[oneshooter]

26. Texas is the same as Washington State. n/t

[paulsby]

29. false. not in WA state

there is no law in WA state (whcih is where this occurred) prohibiting firearms in churches.

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=9.41.300

that lists prohibited places under the RCW

hth

[Euromutt]

10. Calvary Lutheran; I drive past it a few dozen times a week

As it happened, I'd just picked up my son from day care (about a mile west of the church) and was headed home when I saw two news helicopters circling and went "oh, shit," though admittedly more because when news helicopters are circling a point along the route you intend to take, something bad has happened and you're almost certainly in for traffic delays. It wasn't too bad, though when I saw half a dozen camera crews on the sidewalk, and then crime scene tape and several Federal Way PD squad cars around the church parking lot, I knew something really bad had to have happened.

But while I hate to sound like a broken record, it's a fairly decent bet that what the shooter heard that he didn't like was something along the lines that his wife didn't think counseling was helping whatever issues they had, and that she was going to file for divorce. The bulk of spousal killings occur at some point in the continuum of the wife leaving his abusive ass, and for what it's worth, we can almost definitely attribute this murder not so much to the fact that the guy had a gun as to the fact that the couple already had problems (why else would they be in marriage counseling?) which the husband couldn't deal with. This only supports the argument made by Gavin de Becker in The Gift of Fear that it is a myth that spousal killing occur in the heat of argument; the murder of a spouse is a considered response to an undesired contingency, rather than a loss of control. It's very likely in this case that the husband purposely brought the gun to the counseling session precisely because he was expecting unwelcome news, and had already decided that if that news materialized, he would resort to lethal violence.

[Cheap_Trick]

19. At least his god given 2nd amendment rights were in no way impeded.

THAT'S the important thing.

[hex29a]

20. Absolutely correct!

:thumbsup:

[shadowrider]

21. If you assume pro 2A people are happy about this

Well, you're in need of serious education.

This guy would have attempted to kill her if he didn't have a gun. Maybe he'd have used a butcher knife to the back, maybe a vase, maybe a crowbar, maybe poison. Maybe she'd be lucky and survive having to eat her steak through an IV tube.

This guy was going to kill her regardless. Not having a gun wouldn't have prevented it.

[Name removed]

22. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[cabluedem]

32. his right to be a prison birch won't be impeaded either.

[cowman]

35. Prison birch?

He has the right to be a prison tree?

[PavePusher]

37. Let's make a canoe. n/t

[proteus_lives]

28. Ban marriage.

Then we'll be safe.

[paulsby]

31. ban all dating and sexual contact between men and women

(and men and men and women and women for that matter)

let's stop domestic violence here!

after all, a TINY percentage of those lawfully carrying guns commit heinous crimes with guns

therefore, some think it's ok to restrict the rights of all of us to keep and bear arms

well, a much LARGER %age of those in a dating or marital relationship commit violent crimes upon their partners

i guess we need to restrict the rights of people to date, marry and cohabitate

[shadowrider]

33. Ban people. That'll fix the problem.

[Euromutt]

34. More details; I'm not surprised to see I was on the right track

From the Seattle Times (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/theblotter/2011391595_update_man_charged_with_killin.html):

According to police and prosecutors, the couple had been married for 12 years before divorcing last year. Parsons, 42, had hopes of reconciliation, but his ex-wife had moved on and was dating another man, charging documents allege.

When the counseling session began at Calvary Lutheran Church in Federal Way on Wednesday, Parsons allegedly said they were going to "get down to the nitty-gritty today" and then asked his ex-wife Carol Parsons, 38, whether she planned to continue dating her boyfriend, court documents allege.

When she said yes and refused to end the relationship, Charles Parsons walked across the room and retrieved a .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun from the pocket of his coat, court documents allege. He fired the weapon six times, according to court documents, striking Carol Parsons five times.

Like I predicted in my post #10 above, it's standard spousal killing stuff; the fucker couldn't handle the blow to his self-image of his wife definitely rejecting him, and he'd brought the gun along with the intent to kill her if she didn't say she'd come back to him.

Further stuff from the Seattle Times (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011382285_churchshooting19m.html) indicates this is textbook stuff:

According to Hales, his sister was a stay-at-home mom during the week and a paid caregiver on the weekends.

While Parsons was not physically violent toward her, Hales said he was at times "possessive and overbearing," calling her at all hours to check on her whereabouts.

Straight out of Linden Gross' To Have or To Harm and Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear.

It's worth pointing out that there's no reason to assume this murder would not have taken place absent the gun. The guy intended to kill his wife if she told him she wasn't coming back, and he could just have readily used a knife (as plenty of spousal killers do).

[shadowrider]

36. The guy intended to kill his wife if she told him she wasn't coming back

See post #21. I said the same thing.