Veronica Rutledge and her husband loved everything about guns. They practiced at shooting ranges. They hunted. And both of them, relatives and friends say, had permits to carry concealed firearms.
Veronica typically left her Blackfoot, Idaho, home with her gun at her side. So on Christmas morning last week, her husband gave her a present he hoped would make her life more comfortable: a purse with a special pocket for a concealed weapon.
The day after Christmas, she took her new gift with her on a trip with her husband and her 2-year-old son. They headed hundreds of miles north to the end of a country road where Terry Rutledge, her husband’s father, lived. The father-in-law learned of the new purse.
“It was designed for that purpose — to carry a concealed firearm,” Rutledge said Tuesday. “And you had to unzip a compartment to find the handgun.”
On Tuesday morning, that was exactly what Veronica Rutledge’s son did — with the most tragic of outcomes. Veronica, 29, arrived at a nearby Walmart in Hayden with her three nieces and son, her gun “zippered closed” inside her new purse, her father-in-law said. In the back of the store, near the electronics section, the purse was left unattended for a moment.
“An inquisitive 2-year-old boy reached into the purse, unzipped the compartment, found the gun and shot his mother in the head,” Rutledge said. “It’s a terrible, terrible incident.”
The aftermath has been crushing, he said. His son went to the Walmart to collect his nieces and son, and no one now is sure what to say to the boy, who is not doing well.
“My son is terrible,” Terry Rutledge said. “He has a 2-year-old boy right now who doesn’t know where his mom is, and (his father will) have to explain why his mom isn’t coming home. And then, later on in his life, as he questions it more, he’ll again have to explain what happened, so we’ll have to relive this several times over.”
The path Veronica Rutledge charted before her death, friends and family say, was one of academics and small-town country living.
“Hunting, being outdoors and being with her son” was what made her happiest, her friend Rhonda Ellis said.
She graduated in 2010 from the University of Idaho with a chemistry degree, according to a commencement program. From there, she got a job at Battelle’s Idaho National Laboratory and published several articles. While away from the lab, she and her husband, whom she married in 2009, spent time shooting guns.
“They carried one every day of their lives, and they shot extensively,” Rutledge said. “They loved it. Odd as it may sound, we are gun people.”
