KPLC 7 News, Lake Charles, LouisianaAttempted Murder Suicide

Attempted Murder Suicide

April 1, 2004
Reported by Danner Evans

Thursday was a day residents of the Delaine apartment complex in Sulphur will never forget. Their morning routine was disrupted by gunshots. The target was their landlord, and the alleged shooter was one of their neighbors.

Suzy Bovel was loading her baby into the car when she says her neighbor, Terry Mahaffey, walked up to their landlord's truck and opened fire, "He started walking away, got to here with the shot gun, just walking and kept on walking around the side of the apartment. I didn't know if he was going to shoot me, or what kind of frame of mind he was in, so I just went inside and called 911."

Landlord Joseph Smith was in the truck with his young son and wife when Mahaffey allegedly started shooting. Smith's wife was behind the wheel though, and witnesses say she drove off, taking him to West Cal Cam Hospital.

Scott Kyle lives in the apartment below Mahaffey. He says, "He (Mahaffey) never really spoke to anyone. He never said anything to me. I didn't even know his name." Kyle also says he knew there was trouble between his neighbor and landlord. In fact, Mahaffey was being evicted from the apartment, "I knew there were some problems. Joey, the landlord had talked to me about it about a week ago and said the guy had threatened him and even tried to push him off the balcony." That incident landed Mahaffey in jail on a charge of simple battery.

But those problems, it seems, turned even more violent with Thursday's incident, and it didn't end with those gunshots in Sulphur. The Calcasieu Parish Sheriff's Departments says Mahaffey then went to a house on the 1100 block of Olive Street in Dequincy, where he took his life.

The Sulphur neighborhood that Mahaffey lived in for a short time is left in shock. Bovel says, "This is very quiet. There's never any law out here. It's only been since he's been here and in the last couple of weeks that we've had a disturbance."

Folks here say, from now on, they'll look twice at the people that live around them.

At last check Joseph Smith was in stable condition at West Cal Cam Hospital.