U.S. National - AP

Police Say Tacoma Chief Shoots Wife, Self By TIM KLASS



GIG HARBOR, Wash. - Tacoma Police Chief David Brame was killed and his wife was injured in an apparent murder-suicide attempt Saturday, a day after abuse allegations in the couple's divorce case were publicized in media reports.


"The probability is strong that the chief shot his wife and then himself," Pierce County Sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer said.


Brame was pronounced dead at 5:52 p.m. at St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma, Troyer said. His wife, Crystal, was flown to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle in critical condition.


The shooting took place around 3:10 p.m. in the parking lot of a shopping center in this town northwest of Tacoma, Troyer said.


The chief and his wife arrived in the parking lot separate cars, with the couple's children in Crystal Brame's vehicle. At one point, the chief put the children in his car, then went back to his wife's car, shot her and turned the gun on himself, authorities believe.


A witness said she saw people in the parking lot running around and screaming after the shootings.


"They had no idea. They were just running for safety," said Kirsten Oakland, 36, and a hair stylist at Harbor Cutter, a shop that looks out onto the parking lot.


The children were in the care of their mother's parents Saturday night, Troyer said. No other information about the children was released.


Brame rose through the ranks to become police chief in Tacoma, a city of 194,000, in January 2002.


"It's a bad day for law enforcement," Troyer said. "This is somebody everybody knew and respected."


"He was exactly what you want," Troyer added, "rose up through the ranks, worked very hard and made chief."


On Friday, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that documents in the couple's divorce case recounted a stormy, sometimes violent relationship.


Crystal Brame accused her husband of pointing his gun at her, trying to choke her and saying he "could snap my neck if he wanted to."


But Brame said he had been victimized in the relationship. He accused his wife of having a "ferocious temper" and being emotionally unstable.


In court papers, Brame said his wife scratched, bruised and pushed him during two fights in September 1996.