Husband Accidentally Fells Wife With Shot

Friday night began like so many others had for Richard Hurd and his wife, Verna. Shortly before 9 p.m., Hurd was fixing his wife’s lunch in their Crenshaw-district apartment while catching glimpses of a favorite movie on television. He expected his wife to be waking any minute to get ready for work as a supervisor on the graveyard shift at the post office in Inglewood. But suddenly the couple’s 22-year-old son, Gregory, burst into the apartment yelling about being beaten and robbed.

A few minutes later, Verna Hurd would be lying on the living room floor critically wounded, shot by a bullet from a gun her husband later said he grabbed to protect his son from presumed assailants. Hurd told police the gun accidentally discharged when he and his wife tried to keep their son, whom police suspect was under the influence of narcotics, from leaving the apartment.

Verna Hurd, 46, shot once in the head, was in grave condition at County-USC Medical Center on Saturday, authorities said. Richard Hurd, 45, was arrested Friday night on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, but was released Saturday morning.

The district attorney will determine whether Hurd will be charged, said Dave Grabelski, a homicide detective.

“It may have been an accident,” Grabelski said.

Returns to Home

Returning to his apartment Saturday afternoon, Richard Hurd opened the front door a crack and cried. A lamp, its ceramic base apparently shattered when his wife collapsed in the doorway, still lay on the carpet.

He could not bring himself to go in, even though he held a list of phone numbers of people needing to be called. He stood outside recounting the accident. He said he wished he was dead.

The Hurds were school sweethearts in Dallas, falling in love when they were 14 years old. Married for 27 years and parents of two sons, the two had planned to spend Saturday night at their high school’s national reunion. Vera had expected to buy a new dress after getting off work.

“I got my pistol thinking there were gang members out there,” recalled Hurd, who had been laid off his job as a customs service agent at Braniff Airlines. “I was wrong, I shouldn’t have had the pistol. I don’t feel like living anymore.”

When Gregory Hurd ran into the apartment Friday night, he was talking gibberish, his father said. Thinking that robbers must be outside the apartment, Hurd ran outside with his gun but returned when he saw no one.

Struggle on Stairs

On the steps to the second-floor apartment, he saw his wife struggling with her son, trying to keep him inside. Gregory Hurd shouted that he wanted to find his attackers.

When the son pushed past his mother, Hurd said he tried to block him on the staircase.

“I tried to keep him from going downstairs, and the gun went off. He pushed me aside and ran down the steps. I ran after him. When we both came back (on the stairs) . . . I saw my wife’s legs. I had no idea she had been hit by the bullet. I thought it went in the ceiling.”

Downstairs, Freddie Wynne had just arrived home when Richard Hurd’s cries reverberated in the apartment.

Cries ‘Help Me!’

“He ran down the stairs and said, ‘Help me! I think I just killed my wife,’ ” Wynne said.

“He really loved his wife,” said Wynne, who said Hurd always walked with his wife to the car when she left for her overnight shift. “They were always together. You can tell when people are well knit together.”

Hurd said he hoped that the tragedy would change his son’s ways.

“Maybe this will wake him up,” he said, his voice cracking. “If that’s what it takes, his mother’s life.”