Man Kills His Wife, Self During Counseling

A man shot and stabbed his wife to death during a marriage counseling session Tuesday, then fatally shot himself as their horrified psychologist fled to another suite in a Sherman Oaks office tower.

Police who swarmed the second floor of 15720 Ventura Blvd. within minutes after the 12:45 p.m. murder-suicide found the woman dead and her husband lying critically injured nearby with a gunshot wound to the head. He died about an hour later at a hospital, Los Angeles Police Lt. Art Miller said.

The identities of the couple, described only as middle-aged, were not released pending notification of next of kin.

Det. Rick Swanston said the husband became infuriated during the therapy session because his wife said she wanted a divorce.

The man shot his wife once with a semiautomatic pistol and then stabbed her several times with a knife, Capt. Jim Cansler said.

Clinical psychologist Danesh Faroughi was shaken but unhurt after narrowly escaping the violence.

In an interview, the psychologist gave this account: The couple were “having troubles” typical in a marriage and the man’s anger escalated during the joint counseling session. The psychologist told the husband to “calm down.” Without warning, the man pulled a gun and pointed it at his wife. As Faroughi reached for the phone to call police, the man tersely ordered him to put down the receiver.

“He pointed the gun at me,” Faroughi said, adding that normally he has no fear of clients, but he believed the man was about to shoot him.

Faroughi ran from the office as a single shot was fired behind him. Yelling “Call 911! Call 911!” to a puzzled receptionist behind glass doors at a securities brokerage, he darted down a carpeted hallway about 50 feet to the office of a friend, insurance broker Solomon Sage, who locked the door and dialed police.

The two men waited tensely for about five minutes until officers came to Sage’s suite.

“We didn’t know where the husband was. We didn’t know he had shot himself. We thought he might be in the hallway,” Sage said. “The police came to our door within five minutes, so then we felt safe.”

Other nearby tenants in the six-floor building, occupied by about 100 business and professional offices, said they neither saw nor heard anything because their doors to the hallway were closed as is typical.

“I saw the doctor running down the hall, shouting,” said Cynthia Cruz, a receptionist sitting behind large glass panels at Wedbush Morgan Securities, next to Faroughi’s office. “I called 911, but I didn’t know anything about the shooting until the police came.”

Julianne Pogue, a licensed marriage counselor who shares a waiting room with Faroughi, said she arrived later than planned at 1 p.m.

Only one person was in the waiting room and perhaps one other therapist, also sharing space, was behind a door with a client in an adjoining room, Pogue said.

“I’m really shaken by this. Thank God I was running late.”