Sunday, March 25, 2012

Cessna 182R, N6279N - Parents: Daughter who shot husband had been menaced. West Tisbury, Massachusetts on Martha's Vineyard

The parents of a Martha's Vineyard woman who was shot by her estranged husband Friday say he had threatened her with a rifle several years before the shooting.

Cynthia and Kenneth Bloomquist struggled over weapons before shots were fired — killing Kenneth and injuring Cynthia Bloomquist, Carl and Elsbeth Helgerson, Cynthia's parents, said Saturday.

"He had (a gun) in his hand, and she was pushing it away," Carl Helgerson said.

Cynthia Bloomquist, 63, remains in stable condition at Martha's Vineyard Hospital, a spokeswoman said Saturday.

Her husband, 64, allegedly broke into the West Tisbury home where she lived and shot his wife, Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe said.

The Helgersons said they worried about their son-in-law's volatility after he threatened their daughter multiple times. On one occasion a few years ago, Elsbeth Helgerson said, Kenneth Bloomquist threatened his wife with a rifle at their former home in Harvard.

"We suspected that something might happen," Elsbeth Helgerson said. "Many of us were concerned."

Husband dead upstairs

On Friday, members of the Martha's Vineyard tactical response team found Cynthia Bloomquist suffering from a gunshot wound to the torso and Kenneth Bloomquist dead from apparent gunshot wounds upstairs in the house Friday morning, O'Keefe said.

The incident unfolded at about 7:45 a.m. Friday when Kenneth Bloomquist, who most recently lived in Rehoboth and traveled to the island by ferry, drove to the 19 Skiff's Lane home where his wife lived since the couple separated more than a year ago, said Carl Helgerson, Cynthia Bloomquist's father.

He quietly snuck inside bearing a rifle and a pistol, said Elsbeth Helgerson, Cynthia Bloomquist's mother.

Both weapons involved in the shooting were licensed, O'Keefe said.

Kenneth Bloomquist cut the phone line at the house, made his way upstairs and pointed the guns at his wife, Elsbeth Helgerson said.

Carl Helgerson said his daughter's life was saved when the pistol jammed. The two then struggled over the weapons and at least one of them fired, he said.

A next door neighbor heard three shots, said Elsbeth Helgerson.

After the shooting, Cynthia Bloomquist told her mother from the hospital that she was unsure of how many shots were fired, which gun went off or who pulled the trigger, Elsbeth Helgerson said.

"Cynthia doesn't remember all of it, because when you're fighting for your life, you're not thinking about how many shots went off," Elsbeth Helgerson said.

At some point, Cynthia Bloomquist called 911 from her cell phone, O'Keefe said in an interview on Friday.

News of the shooting shocked Barbara Bloomquist, Kenneth Bloomquist's mother, who, on Friday, said her son was not a violent person. From her perspective, the two seemed to have an ideal marriage.

High school sweethearts, the Bloomquists married around 1971. Barbara Bloomquist stressed that the two had separated, but did not divorce. The couple had no children.

Couple's history

After working for 30 years at her alma mater, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cynthia Bloomquist retired in 2010.

She earned a bachelor of science there in 1970 and retired as the school's senior associate director of corporate relations.

Kenneth Bloomquist owned an aerial photography company, Harvard Images in Harvard, according to public online databases.

About three weeks before the shooting, Cynthia Bloomquist applied for a restraining order against her husband, the Boston Globe reported.

In a March 1 affidavit that West Tisbury police provided to the Globe, Cynthia Bloomquist wrote that she feared her husband "may be volatile and may act out impulsively out of his sense of entitlement.''

In the affidavit, she noted her husband possessed firearms.

Superior Court Judge Robert Kane, who was the on-call judge for emergency orders that night, denied the request, the Globe reported.

A West Tisbury police Sgt. Jeffrey Manter on Friday told a Cape Cod Times reporter that Cynthia Bloomquist had not taken out a restraining order.

He did not mention that Cynthia Bloomquist had applied and been turned down.

On Saturday, Manter said the police department is no longer providing the documents and referred all calls to O'Keefe.

O'Keefe, reached Saturday, refused to comment on the affidavit and Cynthia Bloomquist's application for a restraining order.

Domestic violence homicides and homicide attempts are a very predictable crime, said Toni Troop, a spokeswoman for Jane Doe Inc., an anti-domestic violence organization.

Kenneth Bloomquist's prior threats against his wife and access to firearms foreshadowed the incident, she said.

"These are all warning signs that have been identified, substantiated by research," Troop said on Saturday.

In some cases, Troop said, a judge may order a person with a restraining order against them to surrender their guns.

That Kane denied Cynthia Bloomquist's request for a restraining order against her husband surprised Drew Segadelli, a Falmouth-based defense attorney.

"In my experience it is highly unusual for a judge to deny a restraining order upon request, because the threshold is relatively low," Segadelli said.

Restraining orders

To take out a restraining order against someone, the plaintiff must have a family or personal relationship or have lived under the same roof with the other person and be in "imminent fear of physical harm," Segadelli said.

Cynthia Bloomquist's parents harbor no ill will toward Kane for denying the order, they said, asserting that he must have had a good reason. A restraining order would not necessarily have prevented the shooting, Carl Helgerson said.

"If someone's going to do something, they're going to do it anyway," he said.

O'Keefe told the Times Friday that Cynthia Bloomquist is unlikely to be charged, though the shooting remains under investigation.

When they talked to their daughter on Saturday, the Helgersons said that while she is healing physically, Cynthia Bloomquist was still in shock over the deadly struggle the day before.

"She's more in shock today than she was yesterday," Elsbeth Helgerson said.

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