Authorities in DeKalb County, Alabama, have identified a Mentone couple found dead Dec. 6 in an apparent murder-suicide, along with their two dogs.
They are Kenneth Trowbridge, 76, and Vicky Ruth Patrick, 69, according to Bruce Wilson, DeKalb County’s deputy coroner.
“They were married,” Wilson said in a phone interview. “I don’t know for how long.”
DeKalb County 911 dispatchers received a call from a man in Mentone, now identified as Trowbridge, who reported multiple fatalities at his home, a DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office statement said.
(READ MORE: Family members remember woman, child killed in Chattanooga murder-suicide)
Mentone is a small town of about 325 people atop Lookout Mountain near Fort Payne, Alabama, about 35 miles southwest of Chattanooga. Alabama property records show the scene of the shootings as in the Laurel Creek Lakes subdivision, less than 5 miles southeast of town, and the home there was jointly owned by Trowbridge and Patrick.
“While dispatchers coordinated the response, they maintained communication with the caller,” the sheriff’s office said. “The caller disclosed that he had shot his wife and their dogs, and then expressed intentions to take his own life. The dispatchers continued to engage him in conversation until the call was disconnected.”
When deputies reached the scene, they found the bodies of a man, a woman and two dogs, all with apparent gunshot wounds, officials said. Investigators from the Jackson State University Center of Applied Forensics responded to the scene to collect evidence, and investigators also notified the district attorney.
OTHERS
There have been several murder-suicides reported in the Chattanooga region in recent years, with 15 victims, including four children, plus seven men police believed to be the gunmen.
On Nov. 13, 2016, an 83-year-old man and his 84-year-old wife were found shot to death inside their Cleveland, Tennessee, home in what Cleveland police described as a murder-suicide. The couple’s son found Max and Sue Liner dead inside the home on Springhill Drive the pair had owned since 1975.
On Jan. 31, 2017, a Hamilton County Medical Examiner’s report said Joseph “Charley” Yates shot his longtime girlfriend in the head, then put the shotgun barrel in his mouth and pulled the trigger, confirming what East Ridge police suspected after a mail carrier found a note in the couple’s mailbox.
Yates, 54, was found lying on a bed beside Ellen McKenzie, 48, police said at the time. In addition to the note in the mailbox, a second suicide note was found in the home, signed only by Yates. Friends suggested at the time that McKenzie, who was in poor health, may have been suicidal and that Yates would have done anything for her.
At a Shell gas station in the 6400 block of Hixson Pike on May 20, 2018, Chattanooga police found Kimberly Phillips, 48, lying in the parking lot dead from an apparent gunshot wound, and Frederick Tragesser, 47, was found seated in a vehicle in the same parking lot suffering from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was taken to a hospital where he died. Police said the two were divorced, and the investigation determined Tragesser shot Phillips and then shot himself.
On Jan. 23, 2023, police in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, found a man and woman dead at a home in the Richard City community, and an infant and a toddler were found unharmed. Authorities identified the pair as Austin Seabolt, 23, who was believed to have shot Jennah Curtis, 20, dead at the home in the 400 block of Dixie Avenue. At the time, police said the couple were from the Tennessee-Alabama area and had moved to Michigan and back to Marion County. An argument led to the deadly shooting.
A few months later in Sequatchie, Tennessee, one person survived a murder-suicide that left six dead in a burning home on Pine Street on June 15, 2023, including the male shooter, two other adults and three young children aged 2 to 11, according to Marion County Sheriff’s Office reports at the time.
(READ MORE: Six dead in apparent murder-suicide in Marion County)
As details emerged, Marion County authorities said Gary Barnett was believed to have shot and killed Regina Barnett, her 33-year-old daughter, Brittnee Perez, and at least one child before setting the house on fire and then shooting himself. Two other children were found dead in the home after the fire was extinguished.
Stemming from what police described as a domestic violence situation in Chattanooga’s Brainerd community on March 1, police said Christian Gil, 29, shot and killed Jessica Smith, 25, and her 6-year-old daughter in the home they shared on North Moore Road. According to police, friends and family found all three dead in the home.
On July 8 in Sequatchie County, police said the husband of a resident at the NHC Healthcare nursing home in downtown Dunlap walked into the facility to his wife’s room and shot her and then himself, police said at the time. Authorities identified them as Kirk and Marcie Bubul, both 81. Kirk Bubul was not a resident at the nursing home, police said, but had visited often.
Murder-suicide is “a dramatic, violent event” in which a person commits one or multiple murders and then shortly after commits suicide, according to the Violence Policy Center, a nonprofit organization focused on reducing gun violence that periodically collects and analyzes reports of murder-suicides.
Murder-suicides are a common form of gun violence in the United States, with an estimated 10 such incidents each week, according to the organization. Its research has found that nearly 1,200 Americans die in murder-suicides each year, and nine in 10 murder-suicides involve a gun. In nearly two-thirds of all murder-suicides, an intimate partner of the shooter, who is almost always a man with a firearm, is among the victims.
If you are experiencing a mental health emergency, call now. Help is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Call or text 988. You can also chat with 988lifeline.org.
Contact Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6569.