September 22, 2009

Off-duty Detroit cop shoots wife, then himself

By Tammy Stables Battaglia and Amber Hunt
Detroit Free Press

CANTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Shots rang out in the parking lot of the Canton Public Library this morning as an off-duty Detroit Police homicide investigator shot and killed his wife, also a DPD officer, and then shot himself, according to investigators.

Ed Williams, 36, is on life support pending organ donation, Canton Police spokesman Mark Gajeski said at noon.

His wife, Patricia, 33, was declared dead upon arrival at Oakwood Annapolis Hospital in Wayne just after the 9:16 a.m. shooting, he said.

Canton Township Police officers had responded to the couple's home for a domestic complaint over the weekend, Gajeski said. And today, a male friend of Patricia's called Canton Police at about 8:30 a.m., reporting there had been another incident. He said Patricia was on her way to the police department, Gajeski said.

She never made it.

“He called her and he got her to come over to the library and talk to her,” Gajeski said, looking at the couple's cars still in the parking lot of the Canton Center Drive library parking lot, the revolver used still lying on the ground. “She went to talk to him and that’s when the shooting started.”

Detroit Police spokesman John Roach said Patricia Williams, with the department since November 1995, was a patrol officer at DPD's Northwest District on disability with a hand injury. She had recently been reassigned to the department's Northeast District on restricted duty.

Ed Williams started with the force in 1994.

DPD Police chaplains were on their way to the scene and DPD's Homicide Unit to counsel officers, he said.

"It's a definite tragedy first and foremost for the family of these two officers, but it is also felt here at the Detroit Police Department as well. Folks here are kind of numb."