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Neighbors didn't know slain woman
Saturday, November 15, 2008 10:23 AM PST
COQUILLE — The 700 block of North Folsom Street was quiet Thursday morning. Neighbors walked their dogs and enjoyed a break in the weather.
The only reminder that there was a fatal shooting Monday night was a Coquille patrol car parked outside a single-story house cordoned off with police tape.
Neighbors were reluctant to talk about the incident that left Patricia Shaw dead. And police have little more to say today other than that they are continuing to investigate.
Neighbors who were home Thursday said they never heard a gunshot.
They also didn’t know much about the woman who lost her life.
“I don’t think I ever even met her,” said Wally Collins, who lives near the intersection of Folsom and Seventh Street.
Shaw moved to the neighborhood in July from Texas with her young son.
Pearl Tichenor lives two houses away from the scene of the shooting and had only met Shaw in passing. She said she had gone to bed and didn’t hear any gunshots.
“I can’t say I heard a thing ’til they started showing up,” she said.
Several neighbors said there were as many as 17 police cars that arrived from agencies all across the county.
Collins said he went up to Eugene on Tuesday morning and when he got back, the street was still full of police cars. A police officer has been on duty outside the blue house since the shooting, Tichenor said, and at one point she went out to offer the officer some coffee.
“They put their life on the line more than people realize,” she said.
Coquille police found Shaw, 45, suffering from gun shot wounds at about 9:30 Monday night at 740 N. Folsom St. Medics pronounced her dead at the scene. They had responded to a call from a neighbor about the shooting, Police Chief Mark Dannels said today.
Her son was taken into protective custody on Monday.
Dannels said police still are interviewing people and awaiting test results from the lab. An autopsy took place Thursday and the report hasn’t been completed, Dannels said.
The police department and Coos County Major Crime Team are treating the case as a homicide, though District Attorney R. Paul Frasier said it could have been an accident or a suicide.
Tichenor and Collins didn’t speculate on what may have happened to Shaw on Monday night. Other neighbors very much doubted that she was murdered, suggesting the shooting was self-inflicted or an accident.
Shaw lived at 854 Folsom, about a block away from the house where her body was found. Several vehicles with Texas license plates were outside the house Thursday morning and several dogs barked from within, but no one answered the door. |