By Don Jacobs, Matt Lakin
Saturday, August 29, 2009
She called him "wicked" and "evil."
The sight of him brought "pure fear."
They saw each other for the last time Friday morning when he followed her home and killed her with a pair of shotgun blasts, then turned the gun on himself.
"It all happened in less than a minute," said Robert Bazan, who saw the shooting in the townhouse complex parking lot at 944 Piney Grove Church Road from just a few yards away. "The guy knew what he was going to do when he got there."
Lauren O'Saile, 28, told friends her ex-boyfriend had never beaten her but that he scared her all the same. When O'Saile, the single mother of a 9-year-old daughter, tried to distance herself from him, he ratcheted up his three years of stalking, surfacing twice in the past week.
O'Saile had just returned to her townhouse in West Knoxville after dropping off her daughter at school Friday when Mike Reynolds appeared again.
Police said Reynolds, 33, pulled his black Ford Focus behind O'Saile's silver Honda Accord around 7:50 a.m., blocking her in the parking space in front of her rented townhouse. As O'Saile got out of her car, Reynolds shot her twice with a pump shotgun.
Bazan had just pulled into the parking lot with his pregnant wife.
"We were getting out of our vehicle when we saw the man drive up," he said. "He blocked her in and walked around behind the car to the driver's side with what I thought was a piece of pipe. He never said a word. He just shot her in the chest, pumped the gun, and shot her again in the face.
"He looked over at me, and I grabbed my wife and pulled her down. Then he knelt on one knee, put the gun barrel in his mouth, and blew his head off."
A neighbor in the townhouse complex, Carley Perkins, watched Reynolds' body hit the pavement at the edge of the parking lot, just feet from O'Saile's body alongside her car.
"He was still cradling the gun in his arms," Perkins said.
Both had died when paramedics arrived, authorities said.
Records show O'Saile's relationship with Reynolds had been troubled in Nashville before she moved to Knoxville in early 2007. O'Saile wrote in a request for an order of protection in Knox County that she had obtained a previous order in August 2006 against Reynolds in Davidson County.
O'Saile described Reynolds as her "ex-boyfriend/roommate" on Knox County court records. The order of protection O'Saile had obtained in 2007 against Reynolds expired in August 2008. She didn't renew it, records show.
Her order of protection claimed Reynolds talked about physical violence against her but that most of his abuse was psychological. Reynolds would keep O'Saile from talking with her friends and parents and from leaving the townhouse, records show.
Tara Woodroof, 30, who lives in the same Piney Grove Church Road complex, said O'Saile was one of her best friends. The women had worked at a medical company together before O'Saile started working from her home as a medical transcriptionist.
"She never said, 'I think he'll kill me,' but there was complete fear there," Woodroof said. "She felt he was a very wicked, evil person."
When O'Saile changed her phone number and Facebook page two weeks ago, Reynolds stepped up his stalking, Woodroof said. Reynolds appeared Saturday at a birthday party for Woodroof.
"He showed up Saturday night, and she had a look of pure fear on her face," said Adam Matthews, another O'Saile friend.
On Monday, O'Saile e-mailed Woodroof because Reynolds had appeared at a nearby park while she walked her white German shepherd, Salt.
"She said she was really scared," Woodroof said.
Betty Lane, who rented the townhouse to O'Saile, said she changed the locks about three months ago because O'Saile thought Reynolds had broken into the home.
Knoxville Police Department spokesman Darrell DeBusk wouldn't say whether Reynolds left a suicide note.
My mom was great I miss her :( Also I was six not nine. I'm eleven now :/
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