Victim's family says Fort Lewis gunman was obsessed ex-boyfriend

Relatives of the woman who was fatally shot at a crowded shopping center at Fort Lewis on Wednesday say the killer was an obsessed ex-boyfriend who would not take "no" for an answer.

Military and law enforcement officials said that the victim was a civilian woman who had been working as a vendor at a kiosk in the Army base's post exchange, or PX, when she was shot at 11:20 a.m. by a 59-year-old retired soldier from Lakewood, Pierce County. The man then turned the gun on himself.

The woman, who has been identified by her relatives as 33-year-old Sharlona White of Tacoma, was pronounced dead at Madigan Army Medical Center a short time later.

The man died a few hours later, officials said. Officials today said his name was Lafayette Meminger.

White's family spoke this morning about what they know of the man who shot the woman.

According to White's mother and daughter, she had been introduced to Meminger about a year and a half ago by a member of the victim's church.

"The pastor lady ... introduced them," said White's 14-year-old daughter, Zeunna Woodruff. "She said she had a vision that they were meant to be together."

White and Meminger — who retired from the Army as a sergeant first class in 1992 and had been working at Western State Hospital before his death — dated for about 10 months, Zeunna Woodruff said.

"He was really good to us at first. He cooked and cleaned and said he would never hurt my mother, but then he tried to strangle her," Zeunna Woodruff said.

When that happened, White broke up with Meminger, her family said.

But she was too good-natured and kind, they said. She tried hard to let Meminger down gently, telling him they could be friends even though she did not want to date him any longer, according to her relatives.

He would not let go though, they said.

"He became crazily obsessed, worse than in the movies," Zeunna said. "He was coming around the house all the time, banging on the doors, banging on the windows. He would send crazy text messages to her and show up at her work all the time."

Zeunna said that Meminger used to tell her mother that he couldn't live without her, and that if he couldn't have her, no one could.

About a week before she was killed, White and her two children had moved in with her parents for protection. The night before her death, she had bought a dog.

White's family believes that the man must have recently learned that White had reunited with her high-school boyfriend, who was planning to move from another state to Washington.

According to Pierce County Superior Court records, an order of protection had been filed against Meminger in 2002 by his ex-wife, who claimed he had begun to stalk, harass and threaten her when she started dating again.

In her written request for protection, she said she had divorced him in 1999 after 30 years of marriage. She said she had not had any problems with Meminger until she started dating again, about one month before she filed the court documents.

The woman said since she began the new relationship her former husband had been staking out her apartment, leaving harassing messages on her voice mail and had called a number of her relatives and friends and said that "he was going to bring a weapon, go to the firing range and then 'take me out.' He has threatened to kill my boyfriend also," according to court documents.

Pierce County District Court records show that Meminger was a defendant in a criminal case in 1994, but details on the case were not available electronically.

The shooting shut down the base's primary shopping center and caused massive panic, according to witnesses.

"People were running by me and screaming, 'There's a gunman. Run. Run. Call 911,' " said Kathy Johnson, of San Francisco, who was shopping in the post exchange when the gunfire erupted. "It was pandemonium — like you see in a movie."

Johnson, 44, said she had been in the store less than five minutes when she heard four to six pops.

"At first I thought it was maybe firecrackers or something," said Johnson, who was born at Fort Lewis and was visiting the base with her mother, Kazui Miller, a military widow from Tacoma.

The FBI will lead the investigation into the shooting because both the victim and the gunman were civilians, Garcia said. The Army's Criminal Investigation Command and Fort Lewis law enforcement will assist in the investigation, according to the Army.

The shooting was the first at the post exchange since at least 2001, according to an Army spokesman.

The shooting occurred in a corridor area in the exchange, but not in the main store area, the Army said.

Military police arrived about five minutes after the shooting and secured the area, according to Army spokesman Joe Kubistek.

Virginia Chiene, of Seattle, told KING-TV she was having lunch with her daughter at the exchange when she heard the shots.

"We were so close to the action it was startling," Chiene said. "I never saw anything so terrible, it was just awful.

"Luckily, he didn't go berserk and start killing other people," Chiene's daughter, Diane Dezelan, told KING-TV.

Johnson said she took cover under a rack of shirts. A few steps away, another woman also had taken cover under another rack and frantically started dialing family members from her cellphone.

Johnson said she twice tried to call 911 from her own cellphone, but she got a busy signal. So she called her husband in San Francisco, who dialed 911 from there. The information was relayed to Fort Lewis military police.

Johnson believes she hid under the rack for 10 to 15 minutes. "We were pretty close to the front [of the PX] and didn't know what was going on," she said. "I could see the woman two racks away. We could see each other, and she was flipping out. I was yelling at her to shut up."

"Suddenly," Johnson said, "there was this creepy silence. You could hear only the music piped over the intercom."

Then a voice came over the intercom, calmly instructing everyone to exit to the back of the store.

"Believe me, I was out of that clothes rack in a mili-second," Johnson said.

Concealed firearms are not allowed on Fort Lewis, said Garcia, the Army spokesman. Visitors who use firearms at the base's recreational firing range must register them with the base provost marshal and keep the ammunition and firearm in separate containers at all times until they reach the firing range, he said.

Christine Clarridge: 206-464-8983 or cclarridge@seattletimes.com.

Seattle Times reporters Sanjay Bhatt, Hal Bernton, Lewis Kamb and researchers Miyoko Wolf and Gene Balk contributed to this report.