Widow of slain Va. Tech officer says he was her ‘idol;’ 2 reconnected years after high school
The widow of a slain Virginia Tech police officer said Saturday he was the love of her life and that they had exchanged text messages about an hour before he was fatally shot by a man he apparently didn’t know.
The Roanoke Times reports (http://bit.ly/rBH33C ) that Tina Crouse said her family has been shattered by the shooting death Thursday of Officer Deriek Crouse, a retired Army reservist. Police don’t have a motive for why 22-year-old Ross Truett Ashley shot Crouse, seemingly at random, on the school’s campus and then killed himself.
Tina Crouse said the 39-year-old officer had texted her “Love you lots” at 11:20 a.m., about an hour before he was shot after pulling over a motorist who was not involved in the shooting. She responded, “Kisses!!!!!! Love you.”
As word of the shooting spread and the campus was locked down, she said she texted her husband at 12:52 p.m., “What’s going on?????” Three minutes later, she texted again, “I just need to Kno Ur ok.”
She said she told herself he was busy with the emergency response but learned an hour later that two people had come by the house looking for her. She dropped her coffee mug and her knees buckled, and then a car pulled into the parking lot of her cosmetology school.
“My first thought was, ‘I wish I had kissed him better that morning,’” Tina Crouse, 37, told the newspaper at her Christiansburg home.