The former boyfriend of a Prince George’s County police officer who killed herself after shooting him multiple times is suing the county for $20 million, claiming that her supervisors should have prevented the attack. Attorneys for 48-year-old Billy Peoples, of White Plains, said Prince George’s County police brass should have known that his fiancee, Sgt. Tora Lynn Coates, was suicidal, a danger to the public and unfit to be a police officer, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Greenbelt.
Three years ago, Coates killed herself and critically wounded Peoples in what detectives determined was an attempted murder and suicide.
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Peoples’ lawyer did not return phone messages Tuesday.
According to a Nov. 18, 2008 post on the Web site Behind the Blue Wall, a man who identified himself as Coates’ fiance said the shooting left him partially paralyzed.
“I do not blame her, I miss her everyday. But I blame her [department]. I had warned the [department] that she might have problems that they need [to] address,” the writer said. “She was so well liked by her superiors that they felt that [it] needed to be pushed under the carpet so not to tarnish and end her career.”
The shooting shocked the Maryland law enforcement community. Coates, 38, was a former spokeswoman for Prince George’s County police and worked in internal affairs. She was also the sister of former Calvert County Sheriff Vonzell R. Ward.
On Jan. 28, 2008, Coates was found dead in her Waldorf home, and Peoples was discovered on the ground outside the front door. He had been shot in the buttocks, hip and shoulder, but managed to call 911, Charles County sheriff’s deputies said. She had used her own service revolver, authorities said.
According to the lawsuit, on the day of the shooting, Coates had called a colleague in the internal affairs unit for professional responsibility and another officer in the helicopter division and told them that she was going to hurt Peoples and kill herself. But her employers “ignored statements by Tora Lynn Coates that she intended to put a service revolver in her mouth and kill herself,” according to the lawsuit.
