Oregon woman charged with killing ex-husband in Renton
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King County prosecutors yesterday charged a 41-year-old Beaverton, Ore., woman with first-degree murder, saying that despite a restraining order, she stalked her ex-husband to Renton earlier this week and fatally shot him.
Rebecca Lynn Lai-How, also known as Rebecca Erlich, is being held on $1 million bail. She had been working as a middle-school custodian in Beaverton, a suburb west of Portland.
Prosecutors said her ex-husband, Dean Lai-How, 34, got the restraining order in March after she tried to set fire to his apartment.
She had filled a Christmas-ball ornament with kerosene, lit it and threw it through his door, Renton police investigators said.
About two months before that, she had confronted Lai-How in front of his workplace, the Target store in Lynnwood, with a kerosene container and a lit cigarette, prosecutors said.
The next night, she stood outside his apartment until 3 a.m., prosecutors said.
About 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, Lai-How called 911 from his apartment and said his ex-wife had shot him. Officers found him bleeding from the mouth and the right shoulder. He died within minutes.
The Medical Examiner's Office later determined that the bullet had entered at the shoulder and lodged in the lungs.
Dean Lai-How was shot while walking his dog, a witness told investigators.
Police say Rebecca Lynn Lai-How sat in her car in the Southcenter Mall parking lot before turning herself in at the Tukwila Police Department about 5:30 p.m. that day.
The sergeant who talked to her reported her saying, "No one was supposed to get hurt like this."
The Lai-Hows had been separated for three years and divorced for one year.
She once claimed that he had molested her children — they don't have any children together — but Portland police detectives determined those allegations were unfounded.
Michael Ko: 206-515-5653 or mko@seattletimes.com