CARTHAGE, N.C. — A painter accused of shooting up a North Carolina nursing home may have been after his recently estranged wife during a rampage that killed seven residents and a nurse tending to their care, authorities said Monday.
Robert Stewart’s wife was working as a nursing assistant at Pinelake Health and Rehab when he attacked Sunday, not long after the two split, said Police Chief Chris McKenzie. The breakup ended a relationship that spread over many years and bookended other failed marriages, according to court documents.
Authorities declined to elaborate on how the relationship may have had a role in the rampage, but the prosecutor who charged the 45- year-old suspect with murder left no doubt the attack had a purpose.
“We can share this: This was not a random act of violence,” said Moore County District Attorney Maureen Krueger. “There is only one suspect, and he is in custody.”
A day after the shootings, Krueger said authorities didn’t plan to release much more information about the case outside of the courtroom.
According to marriage records in Moore County, a 19-year-old Stewart married 17-year-old Wanda Gay Neal in July 1983. They divorced three years later, and both were in several other marriages before they reunited and married a second time in June 2002. McKenzie said he believed the couple had recently separated again.
Authorities identified the victims as Tessie Garner, 88; Lillian Dunn, 89; Jessie Musser, 88; Bessie Hendrick, 78; John Goldston, 78; Margaret Johnson, 89; Louise Decker, 98; and nurse Jerry Avent.
Musser had lived at Pinelake for only six weeks, said his son-in-law, Jim Foster, 47, of Aberdeen. He said the man had Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases and was blind and deaf and used a wheelchair. Foster said the family was trying to figure out how to tell Musser’s wife, who has dementia and lives at the same facility, that her husband is dead.
“She was upset that they didn’t bring him to see her yesterday,” Foster said. “I don’t know how we’re going to break it to her. You got a clue?”
