Woman Fatally Shot in Home; Husband Held

    A mother of three was fatally shot Tuesday afternoon by her husband in the Carmichael house in which she had grown up, authorities said.
    Emergency operators received a call about 1 p.m. from a man who said he had accidentally shot his wife in their McKinney Way home and believed she was dead, said Sacramento County sheriff's spokesman Sgt. John McGinness.
    McGinness said Alan Petterson, 40, told investigators he accidentally shot his wife, Pamela, while they struggled over a handgun.
    But McGinness said detectives "have some doubts" about Petterson's story due to physical evidence, including the fact that Pamela Petterson was shot twice in the abdomen. Typically, only one shot is fired in accidental shootings, he said.
    Alan Petterson was booked on an open count of murder Tuesday evening and was being held without bail at the county jail.
    His wife, whose age was unavailable, was pronounced dead at UC Davis Medical Center shortly after the shooting.
    Neighbors said Pamela Petterson had been raised in the house and later moved back to raise her own children there.
    The couple have three sons, ages 8, 14, and 18, neighbors said. They were not at home when the shooting occurred.
    "She lived for her children. She absolutely did," said next door neighbor Mary Lou Kimball, 70, who said she had known Pamela Petterson since she was a child.
    "She really was just too good to be true," Kimball said, adding that the victim had helped her through recent hip surgery, driving her to medical appointments and to the store and checking on her daily. "I wouldn't have expected my own daughter to be that good," she said.
    Kimball said the victim recently had confided that her family was having financial problems because her husband was not working and would not allow her to work. Kimball said she spoke of separation or divorce and called her husband jealous.
    Neighbor Paul Morant, who said he has lived on the other side of the family for some 25 years, said he was stunned to learn of the shooting.
"I still don't believe it," Morant said. "I'm sick about it. It's going to be very hard (on the kids). It's going to be rough."

Woman Fatally Shot in Home; Husband Held

A mother of three was fatally shot Tuesday afternoon by her husband, authorities said. The killing was the seventh of the year in Sacramento County.
    Emergency operators received a call at about 1 p.m. from a man who said he had accidentally shot his wife in their McKinney Way home and believed she was dead, said Sacramento County sheriff's spokesman Sgt. John McGinness.
    McGinness said Alan Petterson, 40, told investigators he accidentally shot his wife Pamela while they struggled over a handgun. The gun was a .38-caliber revolver, according to police, who also found hunting rifles locked in a gun safe in the home. [Where was the gun purchased? For how much? Was it registered to Petterson?] There was no indication of alcohol or drug use by either the suspect or the victim, police said. [Is this based on blood alcohol level tests? What does the coroner say?] Police records show no prior history of domestic violence.
    McGinness said detectives "have some doubts" about Petterson's story due to physical evidence, including the fact that Pamela Petterson was shot twice in the abdomen. Typically, only one shot is fired in accidental shootings, he said.
    Pamela Petterson was pronounced dead at UC Davis Medical Center shortly after the shooting.
    Alan Petterson was booked on an open count of murder Tuesday evening and was being held without bail at the county jail. He has hired a private attorney to represent him.
    A neighbor, Mary Lou Kimball, 70, said the victim had recently confided that her family was having financial problems because her husband was not working and would not allow her to work. Kimball said Pamela Petterson spoke of separation or divorce and called her husband jealous.
    Pamela Petterson's death was typical. In the United States, nine out of 10 female murder victims are killed by males, and nearly one-third of these victims are killed by an intimate (husband, ex-husband, boyfriend or ex-boyfriend), according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Furthermore, studies show that family and intimate assaults involving firearms are 12 times more likely to result in death than assaults involving other weapons such as knives, blunt objects or body parts, according to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research.
    Last year, there were 12 homicides resulting from domestic violence in Sacramento County, according to the District Attorney's office. [What was the total number of homicides - in other words, what percentage was domestic homicides?] Of these, nine of the victims were women and three were men. Between 1988 and 1994, the number of people killed by a spouse or an intimate cohabitant has fluctuated between a low of five victims in 1992 and a high of 17 victims in 1990, said Kate Killeen, supervising deputy district attorney of the domestic violence unit in the district attorney's office. In three-fourths of these cases, she said, the victims were women.
    Neighbors said that the three Petterson sons - ages 8, 14 and 18 - were not at home when the shooting occurred. The two younger sons are living with Pamela Petterson's parents, and the oldest son is staying at his own parents' home, according to neighbors. [Are the children undergoing counseling? Do they have to change schools? Can Pamela Petterson's parents support them, or will they go on welfare or into foster care?]
    "She lived for her children. She absolutely did," said Kimball, who said she had know Pam Petterson since she was a child.
    "She really was just too good to be true," Kimball said, adding that the victim had helped her through recent hip surgery, driving her to medical appointments and to the store and checking on her daily. "I wouldn't have expected my own daughter to be that good," she said.
    Neighbor Paul Morant, who said he has lived on the other side of the family for about 25 years, said he was stunned to learn of the shooting.
    "I still don't believe it," Morant said. "I'm sick about it. It's going to be very hard (on the kids). It's going to be rough."

  Suggestions for accompanying graphs: U.S. homicides by sex of victim and offender and relationship, showing 28 percent of female murder victims killed by husband, ex-husband, boyfriend or ex-boyfriend, while just over 3 percent of male murder victims are killed by wife, ex-wife, girlfriend or ex-girlfriend; California homicides by weapons, showing guns used in more than 75 percent of homicides and of those 87.9 percent with handguns. All of the information for these graphs is in this handbook.

Suggestions for accompanying sidebars or follow-up stories: state of domestic violence prevention in Sacramento, focusing on why the city, which is seventh in the state for reported incidents, is second to last in allocation of state funds - $23 per 100 women, compared with San Francisco's $102 per 100 women.

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