GRIFFITH, Ind. (AP) - A man fatally shot his estranged wife in the parking lot of a parochial school in northwestern Indiana and later killed himself at his home after a police officer confronted him, police said.
Officers responding to a report of shots fired outside St. Mary’s Catholic School about 4:30 p.m. Monday found Nina Castro, 42, lying in the parking lot with a gunshot wound, Griffith Police Chief Greg Mance said.
She and her 16-year-old daughter had been collecting her 14-year-old son from an after-school program, Mance said. The teenagers witnessed the shooting, he said.
Remanard Castro, 55, fled the scene on a motorcycle and headed to his home in the neighboring city of Gary, Mance said.
Gary Police Chief Wade Ingram said an officer found Castro with a handgun in the garage of the house and ordered him to drop the weapon, but Castro shot himself.
The Rev. Theodore Mens, pastor of St. Mary’s, said Castro’s son helped with the after-school religious program and that the daughter, who used to attend the school, is now a sophomore at Bishop Noll Institute in Hammond.
Nina Castro worked at St. Catherine’s Hospital in East Chicago, Mens said.
The pastor said St. Mary’s School wasn’t in session Monday because of the Easter holiday but that after-school programs were being held.
“This tragedy indicates that all of us, individually and as a society, have to make better decisions than we do in general,” Mens said.
The couple was divorcing, with a final hearing scheduled for June 10, according to Lake County court records.
Remanard Castro, who was accused of sexually assaulting his wife at his home in November, was charged in February with rape and criminal confinement. His wife went to the Gary house to retrieve some belongings, and Castro pointed a handgun at her forehead and forced her to have sex with him, then threatened to beat her with a crowbar, according to prosecutors.
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