Waving Goodbye to Denise Pauly

It is a small town where people wave and say hello because they know you by sight and name. On Saturday in Burlington Kentucky, Denise Pauly, 40 would no longer be around to wave at her neighbors. She was not going to pick up her children at her mother’s home after work.

Early on Saturday morning when Denise did not arrive at her place of employment her employer and co-workers panicked. Something was wrong.

The store where she worked contacted the sheriff’s office because Denise’s estranged husband was violent and had been stalking and threatening her life. The call immediately set off a search in this small community. And like so many small town communities across the country they are not trained to properly handle dangerous violent crimes. Many of the small town police departments receive no more than 5 hours of training during their entire career as police offices in the area of preventing intimate partner homicide.

Denise was taken hostage by her husband early that morning where he held her against her will for several hours in the woods. According to a call I received within 24 hours of the incident, police failed to get out of their police cruisers and help Denise Pauly. The witness said they saw officers who just sat in their cars and did nothing to save her. Early Saturday afternoon a shot rang out and Denise was killed instantly. Seconds later another shot went off inside the woods. Dean Pauly was found with a gunshot wound to the head he died the following day.

 
The children ages 5, 9 and 14 now orphans will not be celebrating the fourth of July holiday with their mother eating hot dogs and potato salad. They will not walk in the town parade carrying flags and dancing to the beat of the marching bands. Instead the children will be attending their mothers wake and funeral.

For the remainder of these children’s lives the 4th of July holiday will arrive like an unwelcomed guest. And maybe when they are old enough to undstand what happened that afternoon someone can explain to the children why the police sat on their respective behinds and did nothing to save their mother.

Fatal Mississippi Tragedies Mislead the Public

Today In Mississippi, a gunman walked into a bank shot two customers and then took his employee wife out of the bank, killed her and then committed suicide. The comment from the police chief is rather disturbing to me.

"It wasn't a bank robbery. It was a domestic situation," McComb police Chief Billie Hughes told the Enterprise-Journal of McComb.

These two people were divorced. But this tragedy is no different than a stranger comming in and committing a serious crime. To label the bank shooting as "a domestic situation" allows the murder rate figures in that county and within the state to be reduced.

Sorry, Chief, but with all due respect, this was a man out of control and this crime was a murder. Your words to place the crimes in a neat little box you can check only dimishes the importance of the event. This is not a sneeze in your handkerchief.

It is wonderful to make the community feel at ease and those who are patrons of the bank feel a sigh of relief to know that "It was just a domestic".

But you do a terrible diservice when you label random acts of violence to all victims who fall prey to murder.

According to the Associated Press Wires:
Pike County Coroner Percy Pittman identified the shooter as Robert Lanham. The others killed in the attack were Lanham’s former wife, Rachel J. Lanham, bank employee Ronnie Larrimore and customer James Frederick Fayard, all of McComb.Initial reports said Rachel Lanham was likely shot and dumped out of the vehicle on U.S. Highway 51. However, Pittman believes she may have been trying to get out of the car and was ejected when it hit a tree.Robert Lanham then died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head after apparently shooting himself while driving, authorities said.The McComb Enterprise-Journal newspaper reported that court records showed the Lanhams married in 1999 and divorced in August 2007, citing irreconcilable differences.Rachel Lanham, who worked at the bank as a financial adviser, and Larrimore were dating, according to the newspaper. Robert Lanham had reportedly made a recent threat to harm Larrimore.Larrimore, 38, was the father of two young boys.Heather Lamb, who used to work with Larrimore at an insurance agency, said he was a ‘‘great dad.’’‘‘Real active. An upstanding guy in the community,’’ Lamb said. ‘‘An overall great guy, and those are hard to come by.’’Police say Fayard, who had served in the Army and Navy before working offshore, was killed when he tried to prevent the gunman from taking Rachel Lanham hostage.‘‘He would help anybody who needed it,’’ said Fayards mother, Geneva McGehee Lamana.For a time police blocked off the area around the bank and told people to stay inside.Hughes said the armed man walked inside the bank shortly after 11 a.m., fatally shot Fayard and Larrimore before fleeing with his wife in a truck.While police were at the bank, Hughes said, officers received a call that the ex-wife’s body had been found along the highway near Fernwood, about four miles south of McComb.Police were also told of a one-vehicle accident in Magnolia, a few more miles south on the highway. They found Robert Lanham fatally wounded. Hughes said a handgun was found with the man’s body.The gunman died later in the day at Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center in McComb.Hughes said McComb police were being assisted by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, the Mississippi Highway Patrol, the Pike County Sheriff’s Department, the Magnolia Police Department and the state crime lab.He said no other bank employees were harmed but were shaken by the shootings.