Hugh Hootman, Stuart, Florida man loses his temper and shoots elderly neighbors, Henry and Ginger Wallace dead over laundry dispute.
‘I wish I could take it back.’ A Florida man, 75, has admitting shooting and killing two elderly neighbours following a laundry room dispute.
Hugh Hootman, 75, told police in Stuart, Florida, that he shot his downstairs neighbors after demanding an apology for yelling at his wife days earlier for leaving the door of their shared laundry room open, WPBF-TV reported.
Hootman says that when he approached his 81-year-old neighbor, Henry Wallace, and told him to apologize for yelling and cursing at his wife, Wallace declined to apologize and pushed past him, which prompted Hootman to pull out his gun and shoot Wallace multiple times.
But there was more to come.
Wallace’s wife, 81-year-old Ginger Wallace, rushed outside to investigate the commotion, at which point Hootman said he shot her twice, killing her.
‘I lost my temper’
‘I lost my temper,’ Hootman allegedly told police. ‘So sorry. I wish I could take it back.’
After shooting the elderly couple, Hootman went upstairs and told his wife to call cops.
‘My husband just shot two people and I believe he killed them,’ Hootman’s wife told police on the 911 call. ‘The neighbor downstairs just the other day shouted at me and swore at me regarding the washer and dryer.’
She added that her husband had subsequently disassembled his gun and left it outside, and was sitting in his recliner waiting for the police.
‘He’s in shock, too,’ she told the dispatcher, according to WPBF.
Kathy Barger told WPBF that she was outside hanging a Christmas wreath at the time of the incident, and heard Ginger Wallace come out of the couple’s apartment after her husband had been shot.
‘I heard her yell, ‘Oh, no, no,” Barger told the station. ‘And then she screamed, and then she was silent. That’ll stay with me all my days.’
Detectives with the Martin County Sheriff’s Office said that Hootman had a concealed carry permit and carried a gun with him for protection.
Police say that Hootman gunned the Wallaces down at their 55+ condominium complex, Cedar Pointe, in Stuart, Florida — about 100 miles north of Miami.
Hootman remains in custody and is being charged with two counts of murder without bond, the sheriff’s office said in a Facebook release.
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