Prince George's Woman Fatally Shoots Husband in Apparent Act of Self-Defense

A Prince George's County woman fatally shot her husband in an apparent act of self-defense Saturday after he attacked her at the Capitol Heights duplex where the pair lived in separate units, according to police and neighbors.

Just after 8 a.m., authorities said, police were called to the home in the 700 block of Capitol Heights Boulevard on a report of a domestic dispute. In front of the house, they found Richard Marcellous Wilson, 30, with a gunshot wound. He was taken to a hospital, where he died.

Police said Wilson's wife fired the fatal shot.

The circumstances of the incident are unclear, but police think that the shooting "appears to have been in self-defense," said Cpl. Mike Rodriguez, a spokesman for the Prince George's police department. Wilson, police said, had violated an active protective order when he attacked his wife.

Rodriguez declined to name the shooter because she is a victim in the case and has not been charged. Online court records list her name as Tamiko Buchanan and Tamiko Wilson, and neighbors confirmed her identity. She could not be reached yesterday.

Keith McKinney, 38, who lives next door to Wilson and his wife, said that at one time, the two were living separately in the two halves of the duplex. More recently, McKinney said, they had been separated, and Wilson's wife had been spending time away from the house.

About three weeks ago, McKinney said, Wilson's wife told a group of neighbors that she and her husband had physically fought and that she had been granted a protective order against him. The wife exchanged phone numbers with the neighbors, McKinney said, and asked them to make sure she got in and out of her house without incident every day.

"I never saw her scared," he said. "She might have really feared for her life and did what she needed to do to live another day."

McKinney said Wilson's wife had a security job.

Online court records indicate that she had made allegations of violence against Wilson. He was charged with violating a protective order May 15, and about a month later, court records show, he was found not guilty on an assault charge after his wife "invoked marital privilege after oath."

Stanley Wright, 71, a neighbor, said he saw Wilson walk to his wife's side of the duplex Saturday and bang on the door four times. Wright said he went back inside his own house, but sometime after that, he heard three or four loud pops. He assumed at the time they were firecrackers. He now thinks they were gunshots.