Glen Ellen shooting rattles quiet neighborhood

Detectives on Sunday continued their investigation into the Saturday night fatal shooting of a 73-year-old woman, apparently by her husband, in a rural Glen Ellen home.

A man called 911 shortly before ?7 p.m. Saturday and said he shot his wife after she attacked him with a knife in their Warm Springs Road home, sheriff’s officials said.

Deputies arrived at the home, west of the town of Glen Ellen near Jack London State Historic Park, to find a dead woman and the bedridden man who said he shot her.

She had two gunshot wounds in the torso, one in the chest and one higher up near the neck, Sgt. Shannon McAlvain said.

The man, 76, was not injured, McAlvain said. He was questioned but not arrested. McAlvain did not disclose either person’s name, saying deputies were still trying to notify family members of the death.

The only activity at the sprawling creekside property Sunday morning was a family of deer picking at grass. Nobody answered the door at the single-story tan house. A wheelchair was folded up near the house and several old cars were parked throughout the property, which also included many aging sheds.

A search warrant inventory sheet, tucked into the faded front door, listed some of the items found in the home, including a knife and red cellphone found “on the bed by the decedent,” a shotgun found by a dresser, a Ruger handgun on the floor by the dresser, a rifle in storage near the kitchen, and a black landline phone also found in the bedroom.

Several neighbors interviewed said they saw little of the couple in recent years.

“I know the guy over there has medical issues, so when I saw the ambulance (last night) I thought it was for (him),” said Jim Elliott, who lives directly across Warm Springs Road in a housing division called Jack London Estates. “I’m surprised, it’s always very quiet in Glen Ellen,” he said. “Something like this - wow.”

He said the man used to come over to talk occasionally when he saw Elliott out doing yard work.

“We’d talk over the fence, have neighborly chats,” he said, describing the man as “very chatty, very friendly.”

That was about a decade ago. The man has been too sick to do so for a while, he said, though he did not know the nature of his illness. He also did not know the man’s wife.

Beth Hanson has lived in Jack London Estates across the street from the home for about 2½ years. She said she’d never met the couple but had sometimes heard someone practicing shooting guns on the property. She came home Saturday night around 7:30 p.m. to see a number of sheriff’s cars parked along the road. She walked over and asked if there was anything she could do to help.

“They said, you can’t help anybody here tonight,” she recalled.

McAlvain declined to talk about what was discovered in the home or what might have motivated the confrontation, explaining that deputies are still questioning people who knew the couple to learn more and that he didn’t want to jeopardize the investigation by releasing too much information.

Sheriff’s deputies had been called out to the home on previous occasions, he said, but did not elaborate.

Staff Writer Jamie Hansen blogs about education at extracredit.blogs.pressdemocrat.com. You can reach her at 521-5205 or jamie.hansen@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jamiehansen.