Monday, August 03, 2009
Ten days after Dennis Gurney shot to death Montrose Police Department Sgt. David Kinterknecht and injured two other officers before turning a gun on himself, his family will lay to rest today the 52-year-old Montrose man.
Gurney, who was badly disfigured by a fire while working on an oil rig in Texas nearly 30 years ago, changed for the worse in the past few months, said his wife, Pamela Gurney.
“That wasn’t Dennis in the last hours,” Pamela Gurney said during a visitation in advance of her husband’s burial on Monday. “He really believed he had lost me.”
Pamela Gurney believes that her husband, who had assaulted her in the past when he had been drinking, may have intended to kill her the night of July 25. A week before she had told him she had had an affair. She said her husband’s doctor had taken him off antidepressants a few weeks earlier. After coming home from a granddaughter’s birthday party, Pamela arrived to find her husband drunk and angry. She ran from him when he threatened her life and slammed the door on her hand. She was able to run outside where she dialed 911.
“Coming off the medication and adding alcohol to the mix was the last straw,” she said.
When police officers responded to a domestic violence call at the couple’s affluent southwest Montrose home, Dennis Gurney had locked himself in the garage.
Prohibited from drinking alcohol and using firearms, he had pried open a locked gun chest earlier that day, Pamela Gurney said. With two of the couple’s children outside talking on a cell phone to their dad, Dennis Gurney fired at officers with a shotgun when they broke down the door. He then killed himself with a pistol.
Pamela said her son, Kevin Gurney, pulled police officer Rodney Ragsdale out of the line of fire after he had been shot. Ragsdale and Officer Larry Witte are recovering from gunshot wounds to their legs.
Dennis Gurney had been in trouble with the law before for assaulting Pamela, violating the protection orders, drinking and failing to appear for court. Police had been out at the home before but, “he always gave himself up easily,” Pamela said.
Dennis Gurney was active on a local bowling team and was fond of going on hunting trips with his friends and children. He doted on his grandchildren.
Dennis Gurney had been sober for four months but started drinking eight days before the fatal shooting, Pamela Gurney said. Over the years he had enrolled in alcohol treatment centers three times. She had made a deal with him — that she would stay married to him if he would quit drinking.
He would quit drinking for a time and start up again. For years, he hid his drinking from her. Now, Pamela said she feels a sense of guilt for looking to someone else for solace when she was afraid to turn to her husband.
“He always told friends I was the reason he was alive,” she said. “They could have been having a service for both of us.”
Pamela Gurney has written letters thanking the Montrose Police Department for coming to her aid when her husband turned violent and offering her condolences on their loss. She framed a letter written after her husband’s death and is in the process of writing a letter to the family of fallen Sgt. Kinterknecht.
“It wasn’t your plan to take another life with you, leaving not one, but two families in mourning and a brotherhood of officers behind to deal with the horror of that night,” she wrote in a letter addressed “Dear Dennis.”
- Jul 28:
- Montrose man who killed cop shot himself, coroner says
- Neighbors say Montrose shooter was battling his demons
- Slain Montrose officer gave all to family and service
- Jul 27:
- Services set for slain Montrose officer
- Montrose coroner: Man who killed cop took own life
- Shots kill 1 cop, wound 2 in Montrose
- Jul 26:
- Montrose officer killed in domestic violence call
- Montrose shootout leaves 2 dead, 2 wounded
The Dennis Gurney whom Tisha Slater knew was a horribly scarred but gentle soul who made great milkshakes, listened patiently to a young woman's problems and deeply loved his wife.
Last Saturday, that same man allegedly shot and killed a Montrose police officer and wounded two others who arrived at his house to protect his wife from him.
Gurney, 52, the father of three grown children, ended his battle with police by putting a gun to his head and committing suicide, Montrose County Coroner Thomas Canfield said Tuesday.
Nearby lay the body of Sgt. David Kinterknecht, 42, a popular officer who called his teenage daughters after every volleyball or basketball game he missed. A single shotgun round to the chest killed Kinter- knecht.
Montrose officers Rodney Ragsdale and Larry Witte were wounded in the shootout.
Slater, 31, was once engaged to Gurney's son. During her high school years, she spent most of her free time with the Gurney family, she said Tuesday.
Dennis Gurney had been badly burned while still in his 20s when an oil rig he was working on exploded. The explosion left him disabled, his face a grim mask of scar tissue.
"I can't dismiss what he did, but you can't live through that and not have scars that nobody else can understand," Slater said. "The fact is when you are angry, you take it out on the people closest to you."
Since Sunday, when news of the incident broke, Slater said she has been trying to come to terms with the picture of Gurney that has emerged.
The man whom she remembers as a devoted husband had a well-documented record of spousal abuse and had been in and out of jail over the past year for violating restraining and protective orders.
Neighbors remembered police coming to the house several times over the past year after his wife Pamela, 50, called for help.
Pamela Gurney couldn't be reached for comment Tuesday. Lydia Gurney, her daughter-in-law, said Pamela Gurney didn't want to talk to the media.
In an arrest affidavit obtained by the Daily Sentinel newspaper in Grand Junction, his wife, whose name is blacked out in the document, described him as "an alcoholic (who) becomes violent when he drinks."
The affidavit, filed Sept. 9, 2008, said Gurney slapped her twice and grabbed a phone from her when she tried to call her daughter. Then he slapped her again.
"She fell to the ground and he got on top of her and started to choke her with both hands. She was able to kick him off and she grabbed the house phone and called police," the affidavit said.
In the years between 1995 and 2000, when Slater was close to Gurney, she never knew him to drink even a beer, she said.
Neighbors and others described Gurney as depressed in the months before he snapped.
In the early spring this year, Gurney checked into the Country Lodge, a hotel outside Montrose. He spent his time there writing letters to his wife urging reconciliation, innkeeper Jeff Anderson told a reporter Monday.
"Whatever happened in the past couple of years, that was not the man I knew," Slater said. "I know at one time he loved her and he loved his family. He was like a father to me; if I had a problem, I could always talk to him."
Sgt. David Kinterknecht, a 10-year veteran of the Montrose Police Department, was killed in the incident that stemmed from a report of a domestic violence at a home in the 16900 block of 64.50 Road.
Officers Larry Witte and Rodney Ragsdale were also wounded in the Saturday evening shooting. All three officers were taken to area hospitals.
Ragsdale was taken to St. Mary's Hospital where he was listed in fair condition Sunday afternoon, a spokesman said.
Police Chief Tom Chinn said that after the officers arrived at the home about 8:30 p.m., they began speaking to the person who reported the domestic violence incident.
He said the suspect, who has not been identified, was barricaded in a garage behind the home. Shortly before 10 p.m. the suspect opened fire and struck each of the officers. It was not clear how many shots the gunman fired.
Chinn said that the suspect died at the scene. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation and other agencies are looking into the shooting.
The home is located near the Cobble Creek Golf Course in an upscale area of Montrose about 65 miles southeast of Grand Junction. The owners of the home are listed as Pam and Dennis Gurney, based on data from the Montrose County Assessor's Office.
Chinn did not release details about the domestic violence call that preceded the shooting. He said the department is expected to release more information about the incident today.
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