Husband, Wife Die in Apparent Mutual Suicide

A couple living in a Garden Grove retirement community died Wednesday in what police believe was a mutual suicide pact.

“It appears that it was a planned thing,” said Capt. Dave Abrecht, a spokesman for the Garden Grove Police Department. “All I can tell you is that they both had serious health problems.”

Police withheld identification of the couple--a 79-year-old man and his 66-year-old wife--until their relatives are notified.

Officers were alerted to the shooting about 2:15 p.m. after a caregiver arrived at the couple’s apartment at the Valley View Senior Villas retirement complex on Valley View Boulevard to drive the man to a doctor’s appointment, Abrecht said. On the door, she found a note reading: “Call 911 Suicides.” The man and woman were lying near a handgun on the patio with gunshot wounds to their heads.

“Neighbors had heard the shots but thought they were coming from somewhere outside,” Abrecht said.

The man was pronounced dead at the scene. The woman was taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange, where she died about an hour later.

Police later learned that the man, who suffered from diabetes, had been told by a doctor earlier in the day that his leg would have to be amputated. The woman was also gravely ill, they said. Among the items found in the apartment, Abrecht said, were several apparent suicide notes.

“They were notes to certain people about what happened, why it happened and instructions on what to do with their belongings,” the police spokesman said.

“This kind of thing is a tragedy,” Abrecht said. “For the neighbors, for all of the police and fire personnel--it is very, very sad.”

Reached by telephone late Wednesday, a woman identifying herself as the retirement community’s manager declined to comment on the incident.