My Dad was waiting at a restaurant to meet with a client, Joseph Donovan, Wednesday during lunch. He waited around for some time and tried to contact him but got no answer on his cell phone. He finally left, but when he got back to his office, he found out that he was waiting about the time the SWAT team was busting in his front door. He said that it was esp. shocking b/c he and others always remembered him as being an exceptionally nice person. Apparantly he got in a lot of financial trouble and just went insane. Thankfully his children and wife did not die.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2020515
"This is your life....
...and it's ending one minute at a time."
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/2020515
quote:
Father shoots wife, 2 kids, then kills self
By PEGGY O'HARE
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle
From a distance, Joseph Donovan appeared to have it all -- a respected wife and two beautiful children, a sprawling two-story home with a swimming pool, and his own business.
But pressures had taken their toll -- the 51-year-old engineer recently changed jobs, and this week his family moved to a more modest home in Spring.
Early Wednesday, Donovan shot and wounded his sleeping wife and children, then killed himself after they ran outside.
Donovan, who left no note, had become so despondent over finances, his wife had urged him to seek counseling, authorities said.
Susan Donovan, 49, a Tomball High School chemistry teacher, and the couple's children, James, 21, and Bailey, 19, were in serious condition at Memorial Hermann Hospital late Wednesday. They were expected to survive.
The normally sedate Gleannloch Farms subdivision in northwest Harris County was stunned when Donovan's wife and children, bleeding and frantic, stumbled from their home in the 1300 block of Town Moor Court, screaming for help, about 7:15 a.m.
The daughter banged frantically on Robbie Yovanovic's door across the street as her mother and brother collapsed on another neighbor's porch.
"I didn't know her, because they just moved in two days ago, so when I opened the door, I was just shocked," Yovanovic said.
Donovan first kicked in the doors of his children's bedrooms and shot both in the neck, then shot his wife in the chest, said Precinct 4 Constable Ron Hickman.
Donovan's small-caliber gun jammed, but he continued trying to shoot them, authorities said. He then grabbed a knife and tried to stab them, cutting his wife on the shoulder, before the victims fled.
As officers arrived, Donovan barricaded himself inside the house. When SWAT negotiators telephoned him, Donovan answered the phone and told them they had the wrong number, Hickman said. Donovan then took his phone off the hook and did not respond to police commands on loudspeakers.
Nearly five hours after the standoff began, officers went inside and found Donovan dead in a bedroom doorway from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
"He probably killed himself right after they got out of there," said sheriff's Lt. Danny Billingsley. "The blood was well dried."
Donovan was under tremendous strain recently, having gone from running his own business to working for someone else after suffering financial setbacks, friends said.
His new job required him to travel often, which the family didn't like, and he took a business trip to Africa a month ago, said friend Jim James. While there, Donovan learned he possibly had colon cancer and cut the trip short, but later received a clean bill of health, said James, a former neighbor of the Donovans in the upscale Northampton Forest subdivision.
"I just feel he snapped -- I feel it was all the pressures, starting with his company, then going with this other company, traveling," James said. "I don't think he could handle all that."
James' wife, Loretta -- the real estate agent who closed the sale of the Donovans' new house only Monday -- said the move was hard on the family.
"It was where the kids grew up," she said of the family's former Northampton Forest house, most recently appraised at $287,800, according to Harris County Appraisal District records. "They were very sad to be leaving all those memories ... especially the kids."
The family's smaller home, eight miles away, was valued at $203,600, records show.
"They were the perfect family," Loretta James said. "They loved their children. They cared so much about each other."
Residents in the Donovans' old neighborhood said the family appeared happy, often walking their dogs or holding pool parties in their backyard. Neighbors recalled seeing Joseph Donovan at the golf club just a few weeks ago.
Word of the tragedy traveled quickly through the family's old neighborhood. "Can you tell me if Sue's alive?" sobbed one neighbor.
Bailey Donovan had apparently called 911 from inside the home during Wednesday's struggle -- dispatchers reported someone dropped the phone and they could hear a woman screaming. But because the family had been living in the new house only two days and kept their phone number, the call ID led officers to the former home in Northampton.
Three minutes after that initial call, a neighbor across the street from the Donovans' new home called 911, so there was no substantial delay in emergency response, authorities said.
It typically takes three to five business days for 911 databases to be updated with new addresses and other information, said Sonya Lopez, a spokeswoman for the Greater Harris County 911 Emergency Network.
"This is your life....
...and it's ending one minute at a time."
