“I shot her,” Ernest Chris Chumbley, 48, told a local television news program from jail in Laurel County, KY Wednesday. He was speaking about his wife, who had late-stage metastatic breast cancer. “She died from my shots, but it’s not murder.”
More at USA Today. From the local TV news report, which is heartbreaking, and indicates Mrs. Chumbley’s husband was carrying out “her last wish”–
Chumbley admitted to killing his wife, but said he was just doing what she asked him to do. “She told me to end the pain, stop the pain,” said Ernest Chumbley. From the Laurel county jail, Chumbley said through tears he killed his wife. “Did I want to do it? For her I did. No, I don’t. I didn’t want to do it,” he said.
I’m no judge or jury, and I do not know what happened in this case. But I can absolutely understand a tragic death like this happening among people with limited options and knowledge about end-of-life care, and poor available medical resources to cope with late-stage pain in cancer. As horrible as it sounds, it is conceivable to me that it may not have been murder, but a consensually-agreed-upon escape from pain.