Divorce Trial Ended Before It Started Today: Wife and Stepdaughter Shot; Police Questioning Husband
Two New York lawyers who were waiting for their respective clients at a Queens courthouse apparently never started their scheduled divorce trial today, after word reached them that police said the estranged husband had shot his wife and his adult stepdaughter this morning at their Astoria home.
“I was in shock,” attorney Helene Sherman, who represented the 57-year-old wife, told the New York Daily News. “The guy was a difficult guy, but I never thought this would happen.”
She said the husband, who reportedly is 52, had paced court hallways during earlier hearings and been difficult even for his own lawyer to deal with. And a number of neighbors told the newspaper that the husband had stalked and abused his wife. He also verbally abused both women on a blog, the Post reports.
“He told my 86-year-old mother in the supermarket that he was going to kill them,” an unidentified neighbor told the newspaper. “He was stalking her for years. He said he was going to kill his own [sic] daughter. He blamed her for the divorce.”
The wife had taken out a number of protective orders; the most recent expired more than six months ago.
A former next-door neighbor of the family told the New York Post that his own wife had wanted to move, in part, because she feared the husband.
The husband is being questioned by police, the Post reported this afternoon, but has not been charged. The two women reportedly are in critical condition.
