Man Who Shot Wife in ICU Is Charged with Murder; Was It a Mercy Killing?
A lawyer for an Ohio man accused of fatally shooting his wife in the hospital’s intensive care unit told a judge on Wednesday that his client always acted out of love.
The defendant, 66-year-old John Wise, is charged with aggravated murder, report the Associated Press and the Detroit Free Press. Police say Wise walked into his wife’s room at the Akron General Medical Center on Saturday and shot her. He appeared to be loading a gun when a nurse and others who heard a popping sound arrived.
Wise’s friend, Terry Henderson, told AP that he believes Wise did not want his wife, Barbara, to suffer after having three aneurysms. Wise had previously said that he and Barbara never wanted to become disabled in a nursing home.
Wise’s lawyer, Paul Adamson, made a similar assertion in court. ““Forty-five years of marriage, blessed to be deeply in love with his wife throughout those 45 years, and I am absolutely confident that everything that he’s ever done for his wife has been done out of deep love, including the events that just recently transpired,” Adamson said.
