Posted on 04/27/2003 12:54:50 PM PDT by ATCNavyRetiree
Tacoma police chief shoots wife, kills himself
By LEWIS KAMB, PHUONG CAT LE, ANGELA GALLOWAY and RUTH TEICHROEB SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTERS
GIG HARBOR - Tacoma's police chief shot his wife and then himself in the parking lot of a strip mall Saturday afternoon while the couple's two young children were nearby.
David Brame died at St. Joseph's Hospital in Tacoma about 6 p.m. His wife Crystal was in critical condition at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
On Friday, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that Crystal Brame, 35, had obtained a temporary restraining order in February against her husband. In subsequent court papers, she had accused him of pointing his service revolver at her and trying to choke her during two separate incidents in the past six months.
The couple were going through a divorce.
Brame, a veteran officer who rose through the ranks to become chief in January 2002, denied those allegations in court papers filed in King County Superior Court last month.
Saturday's shooting happened at about 3:10 p.m., said Pierce County sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer.
"We don't believe other people are involved," Troyer said. "The victims were the chief of the Tacoma Police Department and his wife. We believe he shot her and then shot himself."
Crystal Brame was in a black Toyota Camry with the couple's two children when David Brame approached the vehicle, authorities said. The two had arranged to meet in the shopping mall parking lot. David Brame took the two children - 8-year-old Haley and 5-year-old David - to his burgundy Toyota Camry, which was parked nearby. He then returned to the car Crystal Brame was in. He got in also and a short time later two shots were fired, authorities said.
NOTE: This story has been updated since it was originally posted.
"The kids were screaming," said Kirsten Oakland, who works in a hair salon at the mall. "Who would have thought? Awful. This affected the entire community in a split second."
An off-duty King County paramedic was the first to arrive on the scene and begin treatment.
"It appeared she (Crystal) managed to open the door and fell down to the ground," Troyer said. "And the paramedic pulled up right next to her in the car."
Neither child was hurt. They were with their mother's parents Saturday night, Troyer said.
George Sharp, a supervisor for the Rite Aid store, said almost nobody in the store actually heard the shooting. Many learned of it from customers and employees coming in for their shifts who had learned about the shooting from news reports.
"A lot of people expressed shock that it did happen in Gig Harbor and the customers and the employees wish that it hadn't happened but they didn't really feel any more threatened as they would if it were a drive-by or it were a random act," Sharp said.
"I think that people are saddened it got to that stage and unhappy that it happened here, and unhappy that it happened at all."
Troyer said one of the Brame children got out of the car and went into a nearby Hollywood Video store. Witnesses took the other child to the store too.
Jesse Hentz, assistant manager of the Hollywood Video, said: "I feel really bad. And I want the family to know that people care about them."
In court papers, Crystal Brame portrayed her husband as controlling and jealous, refusing to let her use their credit card without permission and checking her car's odometer to monitor trips to the grocery store.
She also accused him of leaving his loaded service revolver on a bedroom shelf within reach of their two children.
Her fear increased last November when she alleged that the 44-year-old Brame "choked me and threatened that he could snap my neck if he wanted to." It was the fourth time that year he'd tried to choke her, each time sending flowers later to apologize, she said.
And just before they separated in February, she alleged in court documents that Brame pointed his service revolver at her, "telling me 'accidents happen.' "
She did not report either incident to police.
David Brame had maintained he was the real victim of domestic violence during his 11-year marriage. He said he reported the assaults to police -- first to his boss, then-interim Chief Ken Monner and to an officer who photographed his bruises; then to police in Gig Harbor, where he was living at the time.
Both times David Brame insisted that police not arrest his wife or even investigate his allegations - even though a state law requires officers to arrest anyone accused of domestic violence if the complaint is credible.
He explained his unusual behavior in court documents by saying he wanted to "protect himself" in case his wife ever tried to malign him with false abuse allegations.
Tacoma City Councilman Mike Lonergan, who sits on the council's public safety committee, said he had a hard time believing the shooting had happened.
"We knew David from his professional side. This is a total shock," Lonergan said Saturday. "He presented himself as a very together person, business-like and very likeable. This entire thing is hard to grasp."
Although Lonergan said the usually outgoing Brame had been withdrawn and seemed depressed lately, he had no idea what was going on at home.
"To know David Brame took the action he did today shows that there was a whole lot beneath the surface we couldn't see," Lonergan said.
Ken Bunting, executive editor of the P-I, said "this is a tragic development in lives that, from all accounts, have been troubled for quite some time. These events are not only painful for the family, but for the community and all who have the responsibility to ask the difficult questions about it. Domestic violence is never a comfortable topic."
Paul Pastor, Pierce County sheriff, announced Brame's death from outside St. Joseph's hospital. He said only that Brame had died of a gunshot wound; no other details were given.
"This is terribly sad news for this city and this community," Pastor said.
Carlos Sambrano, a childhood friend of the chief, went to the hospital to support the family. He said he and Brame played baseball at Lincoln High School.
"He never appeared to be a violent person," said Sambrano, who described his friend as a "class act."
Visibly distraught over the news of his friend's death, Sambrano said: "What's this world coming to."
I think you've got some issues that are clouding your judgment.
Your sensitivity indicates such.
No. Washington, like its neighbors, Oregon and Idaho, is a "shall-issue" CCW state.
I've heard of many similar incidents. The burn out rate is very high. It's also very high with the few social workers who try to make a difference, because they're not just dealing with what sometimes can only be described as atrocities, they have to fight their own PC system which is constantly being effected by PC regs made by intellectually divorced people who's only experience with domestic violence seems to come from watching Lifetime.
It's unlikely we'll ever know the truth. In fact, public interest in this case gives it the potential to become another despicable media circus.
I just hope and pray the mother survives, that the children are able to overcome the horror they went through, and that the mother is psychologically able to aid her children in overcoming it.
The man had reached the pinnacle of a great career and He blew it up in his own face. You are not allowed to murder, even when you think life is unfair.
Your comments are well reasoned. However, I will not grant you that the very thing that we are considering is a "given" . That is "if the threat was real, which we now know it was". We do not know that, though I concede that it is plausible. My point was that the threat might have been engendered by her action to get the restraining order. She knew that the restraining order would destroy his career. She had not gotten it for months during the divorce proceedings. He contended that she was lying.
It was only after she got the restraining order that he committed the crime.
There are many, perhaps more than half, recently, cases where abuse is alledged in order to win advantage in divorce courts. It has become so common that attorneys that I know tell of how many (attorneys) lead clients into its use as a weapon against the other spouse, even if it is not true.
Certainly it is true that people under great stress, who feel as if their life has been destroyed unjustly, sometime act out in destructive ways against the people they think have wronged them.
I am only suggesting the possibility that this officer felt that he was in a situation in which he could never find justice, and in the stress of the moment, felt such dispair at loosing all that he had worked his entire life for, committed the horrid act out of a desperate sense of anger, pain, and retribution.
I am not saying this was the correct choice. I am just saying that the woman's power, given to her by the Lautenberg amendment, may have contributed to the tragedy. If the Lautenberg amendment were not in place, it seems unlikely that the murder suicide would have happened, because the restraining order would not have meant the certain destruction of the officers carreer.
There is a tremendous imbalance in the law here, where an officer can have his entire carreer destroyed on a simple "he said, she said" issue.
I can't say I've had much first hand experience with it myself --- I have a friend also who was physically abused by a wife who drank ---he said he stayed for the usual reasons, he thought he was helping the kids until one night when she was hitting him over the head and he was using his hands and arms to protect his head and face, quietly waiting for the hitting (with objects) he looked up and saw his daughters standing there crying telling their mom "please stop hurting our daddy" so he realized it was worse for them if he stayed. He got out, kept a very close relationship with the daughters ---has phone contact with them every day and now a civilized relationship with the ex-wife.
I guess what I find interesting about some of the dynamics -----OJ Simpson never seems to be hurting for lack of girlfriends. It simply amazes me every time I read of one of his women "friends" calling the police on him ---it kind of seems like a waste of police time for them to answer those calls.
You have entered into the parallel world of pure conjecture.
You're entitled to your opinion. I'm entitled to mine: that it's better to say nothing at all than to splutter PC platitudes to describe the public reaction to a horrible crime.
Amazing isn't it? I hear Scott Peterson is getting 'fan mail' from women who think he's innocent and a 'good catch'. Even on the off chance that he turns out to be guilty of murdering his wife and unborn son, he admits he was having an affair. How is a man who two-times on his pregnant wife a good catch??
Utterly ridiculous. There isn't a poster on this board who can fairly say I hate men. I have said nothing that should indicate that to you that I have an axe to grind against men in particular, unless in your world to love men I must hate women, which is sad. Your trying to demonize all women into probably deserving their own murders is perplexing.
You think men are unfairly treated by society, so you want to extrapolate that politic into imagining that this woman probably did something to ruin this good man. Yours is not a respect of men, but a pandering that supposes that men faced with an angry woman, or one who wants to leave him has no choice but to shoot her and off himself. Bizarre.
What your politic refuses to recognize is that we can fairly say that no matter what she did, this man is the most wrong *in this case*. People in divorce, can behave badly. The weakest among either of them may snap under these or even perfect circumstances. There is always danger when hearts are broken.
Most people get through bad behavior on the part of their spouse without trying to murder them. We don't form laws and court systems in this country to ensure that the most volatile and combustible among us are never upset, never stressed. No court destroyed this man. If he would have had his career destroyed over this divorce, it would be because he was facing the consequences of his own actions. A person of character is not ruined in divorce after an 11 year marriage and creation of two children. They may not be as whole as they were before the divorce, but people get through it mostly-whole if their actions in the marriage have been fair. Those who fail to get through it without murder are more broken than the system.
But then again it was only after she broke that restraining order that he committed the crime. Lots of men have had restraining orders put on them ---for less reason and they got mad but didn't do anything to make things worse. I know people whose kids told teachers they were being abused ----just because the kid was mad about some discipline they received, one case I know where the kid actually called 911 just to show the parents. The parents weren't happy about having police and/or social workers start interfering nor the possible effect on their careers but they didn't shoot their kids.
Anyhow in this case he's dead but if he wasn't, he'd deserve that same fate.
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