Police: Off-duty Detroit News
George Hunter
November 25, 2007
Police are working today to determine why an emergency medical technician fatally shot his wife and wounded his 9-year-old son a day before killing himself... Gibson fatally shot his wife, Ladora Gibson, when he fired a gun into her car on Kelly Road near Saratoga Street. Bullet fragments also struck the couple's 9-year-old old son in the stomach, although he was expected to recover... "That's the number one concern at this point: we hope the boy will recover"... Gibson's problems apparently stemmed from a problem at home... Ladora Gibson had been staying with relatives recently because of a domestic dispute...
Police investigate apparent murder-suicide
Detroit Free Press
By AMBER HUNT
November 25, 2007
It began as a fatal shooting on Detroit's east side, turned into manhunt in Sterling Heights and ended with a suicide in downtown Detroit. That's how police describe an apparent murder-suicide that left a Sterling Heights couple dead and their 9-year-old son injured. The couple -- LaDora Gibson, 38, and Anthony Gibson, 41 -- were headed to a relative's home in Detroit when Anthony Gibson shot his wife, killing her... "I don't know what transpired between them to cause the shooting," said Deputy Chief Joyce Motley of the Eastern District, where the first shooting occurred. The couple had more than one child -- neither Charbeneau, the neighbor, nor Motley knew how many -- but they weren't in the car when Gibson shot himself. Police are still investigating.
Police: Sterling man kills wife, self
ReplyDeleteOff-duty EMT also injures 9-year-old son
Macomb Daily
By Mitch Hotts
November 26, 2007
A little more than one month ago, Anthony Gibson filed papers in court to end his marriage to his wife, LeDora. Over the weekend, according to police, the Sterling Heights man ended her life and his own in a murder-suicide.
Anthony Gibson, 41, an off-duty Detroit emergency medical technician, was found dead in his car from a self-inflicted gunshot wound near downtown Detroit, according to media reports.
Detroit police said he shot his 38-year-old wife Saturday night and injured their 9-year-old son after a confrontation on the city's east side.
Relatives of the slain woman told reporters Anthony Gibson phoned them Saturday night after the fatal shooting and told them his plans to take his own life.
"He said 'I killed your sister and I'm going to kill myself,'" said Vaden Salaam, LeDora Gibson's sister.
According to broadcast reports, Anthony Gibson hunted down his wife as she headed to a relative's home in Detroit on Saturday evening and found her on Kelly Road, near Saratoga.
That's where he fired several shots into her car, fatally striking her and hitting their son, Christopher, in the stomach, police and broadcast reports said.
Christopher Gibson, one of the couple's three children, reportedly was in stable condition Sunday at St. John Healthy System Hospital, Detroit. Investigators were not certain whether the son was struck intentionally or by accident.
Detroit police notified Sterling Heights police about the incident. Sterling Heights police, concerned Gibson may have barricaded himself inside the couple's home, called out a SWAT team to go to the house on Wilmington Court in the area of 19 Mile and Schoenherr roads late Saturday.
Officers discovered Gibson was not inside, said Sterling Heights police Chief David Vinson.
"Everyone was pretty worried that he went back home," Vinson said. "When you first get word that someone has killed their spouse, you don't know what to expect."
Police searched throughout the night for the suspect, but had no luck until they found his car parked on Nicolet Place near East Lafayette and Rivard in Detroit. He apparently had phoned his superiors at work to tell them he was going to shoot himself.
Salaam, the victim's sister, said LeDora had been the victim of physical and mental abuse for years. She said her sister had been staying with relatives because she was afraid of her husband.
Anthony Gibson filed papers in Macomb County Circuit Court on Oct. 17 to have their marriage annulled, according to the court's Web site. His attorney, Lawrence Schultz, could not be reached for comment Sunday.
Vinson could not immediately say whether Sterling Heights police had been called to the Gibson home in the past to take reports of domestic violence.
"Sometimes during the holiday season these domestic situations become a lot more intense," he said.
The murder-suicide was the latest in a spate of violence involving romantic relationships in Macomb County. Prior to Saturday, four people had died in three slayings related to domestic situations in the county in the past three weeks.
http://www.macombdaily.com/stories/112607/loc_doublehom001.shtml
Chilling phone call warned of deaths
Sister describes pair's troubles
Detroit Free Press
By Amber Hunt
November 27, 2007
By the time Vadene Salaam heard the voice mail from her brother-in-law, she already knew her sister was dead.
That made his message even more chilling.
"It was like Satan was calling," Salaam said. "He said, 'I just killed your effing sister, and I'm gonna kill my effing self.' " Three days after the shooting death of LeDora Gibson in Detroit -- which led to a multi-jurisdictional manhunt for her husband, Anthony Gibson, and his subsequent suicide -- Salaam is filled with what-ifs.
What if she had pushed her sister harder to stay away from Anthony Gibson? What if LeDora had gotten a restraining order? What if she had left her husband earlier?
"She was deathly afraid of him," Salaam said. Her brother-in-law had always been abusive, she said. And it was just a matter of time before his violence would escalate.
Deputy Chief Joyce Motley of Detroit police's Eastern District said police are trying to pinpoint the motivation behind the shooting that also left the couple's 9-year-old son, Christopher, injured.
Salaam's 38-year-old sister was shot several times in the head and neck in a car at Saratoga and Kelly on Detroit's east side as she drove Christopher to a relative's house Saturday night. Bullet fragments hit him in the stomach. He was in fair condition at St. John Hospital in Detroit on Monday.
Anthony Gibson -- a 41-year-old Detroit emergency medical technician -- shot and killed himself at 9:45 a.m. Sunday outside a home in the 1300 block of Nicolet Place, near East Lafayette and Rivard in Detroit.
He had filed for divorce Oct. 17. The Free Press was unsuccessful in reaching his family members.
LeDora Gibson knew she was in danger, her sister said. She had suffered eight years of abuse in her 10-year marriage and had moved to Texas for two months to flee her husband.
She returned Nov. 11 for the sake of their son.
Two weeks later, she was dead.
"She was attempting to have a cordial relationship," said Salaam, 40, of Farmington Hills. "They weren't reconciling. They were very estranged."
She hesitated checking her voicemail because she worried her sister had called for help -- a message that would have haunted her for life.
Instead, she will forever hear the voice of Anthony Gibson gloating about killing LeDora.
"It was really, really eerie," Salaam said. "It was like, 'I got all y'all back now' because he killed her."
LeDora Gibson worked as an administrative assistant at the Infant Mortality Program, which works with at-risk women to try to curb the infant mortality rate in Wayne County.
The events surrounding the murder-suicide led to chaos in the Sterling Heights neighborhood where the pair once lived.
The neighborhood essentially was on lockdown when a SWAT team surrounded the couple's home on Wilmington Court.
Police called the Gibsons' neighbors and told them to stay away from windows and doors in case of gunfire.
Officers shouted through bullhorns, trying to reach Gibson. But police said Gibson wasn't there.
Instead, he had driven around overnight, calling relatives on his cell phone and telling them he had shot his wife.
Salaam didn't check her messages until about 4 a.m. By then, police already had told her that her sister was dead.
Contact AMBER HUNT at 586-469-4682 or alhunt@freepress.com.
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