Ohio Firefighter Fatally Shoots Fiancée and Then Himself: 'It Is a Total Tragedy'
An Ohio firefighter killed his fiancée before taking his own life.
Officers were called to a house on Brittain Road in Akron around 2 a.m. Thursday after the victim’s 11-year-old daughter called 911. The girl reported that her mother Olivia “Liv” Hamey, 35, and her fiancé, Twinsburg firefighter Demetrius T’Juan Butler, 35, had been in an argument before she heard the sounds of gunshots. She found her mother unresponsive in the basement.
Hamey’s seven-year-old son was also in the home at the time of the shooting.
“It is a total tragedy,” Akron Police Department Lt. Rick Edwards tells PEOPLE. “There were two small children and the 11-year-old heard the argument and found her mother. She will remember this for the rest of her life.”
Edwards says a motive is unclear.
“We don’t know what they were arguing over,” he says.
The couple had been engaged since Dec. 2017, according to a posting on Hamey’s Facebook page.
According to the Canton Repository, soon after the shooting, Butler’s mother called 911 and told dispatchers that her son called her and admitted to killing Hamey.
The woman told the dispatcher that Butler had the gun with him and planned to take his own life.
“Please don’t kill my son, please don’t kill my son,” she pleaded with dispatchers, according to the Repository.
A few minutes later, Butler arrived at his mother’s home and agreed to speak with the dispatcher.
Asked by the dispatcher how he was doing, Butler responded: “I’m not doing good, man,” he said, the Repository reports. “This s— just built up and [expletive] built up and built up.”
Butler told the dispatcher that he planned to end his own life and then got off the phone.
When police arrived at Butler’s mother’s home, he was standing in the driveway, according to a police press release obtained by PEOPLE. As officers approached, he put the gun to his chest and pulled the trigger, the release states.
Edwards says the case remains open until the autopsies are complete.
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Butler was a full-time Twinsburg firefighter also worked part-time with the Tallmadge and Norton fire departments.
According to News5, Hamey worked as a social worker at a local hospital.
