Cops: Wife got in parting shot before killing

Cops: Wife got in parting shot before killing

By O'Ryan Johnson
Tuesday, March 29, 2011 -

With her final words before she was fatally shot, Elaine McCall needled her husband for missing with his first shot yesterday morning inside their Wakefield home, police said.

" 'You can't even shoot,' " she said, according to her husband David McCall's reported statements to police.

The 72-year-old husband was charged with murder after hitting his wife with the second shot from the top of the stairs, police said. His 69-year-old wife's body crumpled to the floor near the front door, shot in the chest, police said. David McCall walked to the kitchen, called 911, and then tried to shoot himself, according to police, but he missed again, grazing his chest through his sweatshirt.

"The Glock is on the floor," he told cops when they arrived, according to the report. "I shot my wife," he told police.

Middlesex District Attorney Gerard Leone told reporters that when McCall dialed 911 he told a dispatcher there had been a "murder-suicide."

"Apparently, he didn't make good on the suicide," Leone said.

McCall was held without bail and sent to Bridgewater State Hospital for a competency evaluation after he was arraigned on first-degree murder and discharge of a firearm within 500 feet of a dwelling, according to court documents.

It took Middlesex County Sheriff's deputies several minutes to walk the frail McCall from the courthouse door and seat him in a prisoner van that would take him to jail. During the walk, reporters asked McCall if he had anything to say.

"No comment," he shouted hoarsely. His lawyer could not be reached for comment.

Leone said there was no history of police calls to the home, though police said McCall told them he and his wife had fought for years. He told police that yesterday morning's fatal dispute started when she told him she would not "cook or take care of him anymore."

When police found McCall he was sitting at the kitchen table of their yellow, two-story Lowell Street home, police said. The walker he used to get around was in front of him. The alleged murder weapon was on the floor beside him, with a loaded clip beside it and a spent shell nearby.

Elaine McCall still had a pulse and was taken to Melrose Wakefield Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Neighbors said the couple had lived there for decades, described them as "quiet," and said they "kept to themselves." County records indicate the McCalls had a reverse mortgage on their home, valued at $532,000 in 2008, the same year a lien was placed on it for an $800 unpaid water bill.

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