Wife Charged in Fatal Stabbing in Pr. William

Of all the tasks required of employees at the Lowe's home improvement store in Dale City, Erin Turner-Schaefer thrived at the hard labor. The 25-year-old loved working during the holiday season in the store's outside lawn and gardening section, where all day he could wrap his hands around Christmas trees, trim them, net them and hoist them on top of customers' cars.

After work Saturday, Turner-Schaefer headed to his Dale City home, where he was stabbed to death that night in his kitchen, Prince William County police said yesterday.

The Lowe's store's operations manager, Richard Roche, said yesterday that Turner-Schaefer's co-workers feel as though they have lost a member of their family.

Police said that about 11:50 p.m., Teressa Turner-Schaefer, 23, stabbed her husband in the chest after the two got into an argument. She was charged with first-degree murder and is being held without bond, they said.

Police declined to comment on what the couple were arguing about. They said that their children -- two sons, ages 7 and 5, and a 3-year-old daughter -- as well as Erin Turner-Schaefer's 15-year-old brother were at the home in the 3700 block of Del Mar Drive when he was slain.

After a family member called 911, rescue workers found Turner-Schaefer lying on the kitchen floor with a stab wound in his chest, police said. He was taken to Potomac Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Detective P.J. Masterson interviewed Teressa Turner-Schaefer later that night. "She confessed to me that she stabbed her husband during an argument," he wrote in a criminal complaint filed in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.

Donna Hardy, 46, a next-door neighbor and close friend of the Turner-Schaefers', said yesterday that the couple had a very strong relationship and that Teressa Turner-Schaefer said the death was accidental. Hardy said she spoke with her friend twice on the telephone from jail.

"She said that it was an accident," Hardy said. "She had the knife in her hand, and she heard Erin coming, and she turned around and Erin just walked right into the knife. She can't believe he's gone. She's scared."

But Paul B. Ebert, the county's chief prosecutor, said the killing was deliberate. "It was not an accident. That's all I can tell you," he said.

The couple met when they were teenagers living in New York and had been in Dale City for about two years. Erin Turner-Schaefer had recently returned home from Iraq, where he was wounded while serving with the U.S. military, Hardy said. He was also a member of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars post.