Gun-Toting Soccer Mom Meleanie Hain's Murder Caught on Web Cam, Say Cops
NEW YORK (CBS/AP) A friend of gut-toting soccer mom Meleanie Hain was chatting with her on a video web cam when her husband, Scott Hain, shot her to death in cold blood, say authorities.
The friend, who has not been named, "observed Scott Hain standing over where Meleanie was and discharging a handgun several times," Lebanon, Pa. Police Chief Daniel Wright said at a news conference.
The man, who was described as a friend of both Scott and Meleanie Hain, called 911.
Police say Scott Hain, 33, used his own gun to fire several shots into his 30-year-old wife perhaps at the same time as she was washing dishes in the kitchen. Then he killed himself in an upstairs bedroom.
Meleanie Hain's infamous loaded pistol - with a bullet ready in the chamber - was in a backpack hanging from the front door.
The couple's three young children were home just before the murder-suicide, but authorities stopped short of saying they were home at the time. The online friend heard a shot and screams and turned to see Scott Hain firing, they said.
"He kept open his Web cam episode; however, he heard nothing or saw nothing after that," Wright said. The chat was apparently not recorded.
Meleanie Hain became a voice of the gun-rights movement last year when she fought for the right to carry a holstered pistol at her young daughter's soccer games. Other parents complained, prompting a sheriff to revoke her concealed-weapons permit, a decision a judge later overturned.
"I'm just a soccer mom who has always openly carried (a firearm), and I've never had a problem before," Hain said last fall. "I don't understand why this is happening to me."
The Hains later sued the sheriff who had revoked her gun permit. The $1 million suit, which claims they suffered emotional distress and lost customers for her home baby-sitting service, remains pending against Lebanon County Sheriff Michael DeLeo.
Scott Hain, a parole officer, owned the 9 mm handgun used to kill his wife. He then killed himself with a shotgun, authorities said after Friday's autopsies. Police found several handguns, a shotgun, two rifles and several hundred rounds of ammunition in their Lebanon home, as well as six spent shell casings in the kitchen.
Friends and neighbors told police the couple had been having marital problems, but police knew of no immediate cause of the violence. Scott Hain was living at the family home at the time, Wright said.
Their three children are ages 2, 6 and 10.
Neighbor Aileen Fortna has said the children told another neighbor that "daddy shot mommy."
The judge who restored Meleanie Hain's concealed-weapon permit last year questioned her judgment and said she had "scared the devil" out of other parents at the soccer field.
MORE ON CRIMESIDER
October 9, 2009 - Gun-Toting Soccer Mom Murder: Meleanie Hain's Kids Say "Daddy Shot Mommy"
October 8, 2009 - Gun-Toting Soccer Mom Meleanie Hain (Pictures) and Husband Scott Hain Found Dead