Posted on 07/14/2006 9:27:43 PM PDT by woofie
Gunfire at McLean Home Followed Fight With Wife
A former Bush administration official, after arguing violently with his wife Thursday night, shot and killed his 12-year-old son inside their McLean home, then turned a shotgun on himself and committed suicide, Fairfax County police said.
William H. Lash III, 45, was an assistant secretary of commerce from 2001 until last year, then returned to teach at George Mason University Law School in Arlington, where he had begun as a professor in 1994. His wife, Sharon K. Zackula, fled the house before the shootings, and police said yesterday they were not sure what ignited the murder-suicide in a first-floor bedroom.
Friends and neighbors described Lash as devoted to his only child, William H. Lash IV, who was autistic. Will Lash had just completed sixth grade at Haycock Elementary School in the Falls Church area, Fairfax school officials said. The father and son could often be seen side by side on the swing set in their back yard, one neighbor said, and the pair often attended Washington Nationals baseball games.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The guy was a midlevel bureaucrat, hardly a "Bush Aide". I doubt the President ever met him.
The spin in this headline is beyond disgusting.
Well, I hope I never hear such spew when you are street preaching.
The good news (gospel) is forgiveness, mercy, and all that.
What gospel DO you preach on the street?
"Special place in hell for someone who would kill his own child."
- The article seems to indicate that he was very close to his son. I take his actions to be one of a suicidal individual who kills his son - not out of hatred or revenge but because in his twisted thinking he couldn't bear to leave him behind.
This really has me crying. My oldest has autism.
It doesn't make sense. Unless maybe the wife had just told him she was leaving him and taking the boy. Maybe in a crime of passion he didn't want to "lose" his son?
Let's hope you are wrong -- he appointed him
Is this some kind of mitigation for murder?
Thanks for your post.... all I can say is that some things in life are truly incomprehensible
I agree.
Agreed, but sometimes it is the system, not the situation, that pushes them over the edge.
Every once in a while, someone just loses it with tragic results.
I also knew him through my work. I agree with everything you've stated. He was very jovial, highly intelligent. It's inexplicable and deeply disturbing.
and why are they losing it?
A general feeling of helplessness aggravated by the tax codes, and increasing regulation of every aspect of day-to-day life.
What you wrote is absolutely ludicrous. How dare you accuse people you don't know of gaining happiness from such a tradgedy.
How disgusting. I know Sharon, and regardless of her political beliefs, she would not want people saying what you have said.
How awful. Prayers for the widowed mother and their family and friends.
Assistant Commerce Secretary is a presidential aide?
I once read that any official that serves at the pleasure of the president is considered an "aide"
I'm not sure
Well said.
Another article spoke to an assignment he had to come to some understanding with drug companies in Israel re patents and generic drugs and standards. It demonstrated the confidence that we (US government) had in his ability to negotiate,clarify and deal with very complex issues. Whatever happened to cause him to kill himself and the child,it is just tragic and we should pray for them as well as his wife.
Although I hadn't even heard of him until this sad event,he is the fifth death this month that seems imponderable. The others were all deaths out of time,so to speak. A friend of mines brother's wife was killed in a jet ski accident,her young son ran into her on another ski and she was killed. Think of a young son killing the mother he loved.
A young mother of six or seven,who had written a beautiful book on the development of a baby from conception,through birth,to a couple of weeks out of the womb,ran over her four year old in the church parking lot,he died. Every parents nightmare becomes reality.
The chairman of group collecting petitions to place a "marriage between a male and female" on the ballot was killed in a one car accident the day before the group was to submit the petition to the state. The victory celebration for the intermediate goal accomplished was instead a time to mourn her death.
And finally,a relatively young president of a regional religious order died less than two months after being diagnosed with cancer. She had been young and vital. Another nun told me that one of the other "sisters" had said "I wonder if this is some kind of a message?" Looking at all of this is like a microcosm of the state of the world and I too wonder if we are getting some kind of a message from the One who loves us all and wishes we would choose Him?
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