Man Arrested In Wife’s Beating Deputies Respond To Distress Call From Boat On Lake Cda And Find Badly Beaten Woman

A Spokane Valley woman was in an Idaho hospital Saturday and her husband in jail after deputies found her badly beaten in the couple’s boat on Lake Coeur d’Alene.

James Gordon Loss, 46, was booked into the Kootenai County Jail on charges of aggravated battery.

He is accused of beating his wife, Jerrene, who was listed in critical condition at Kootenai Medical Center.

Kootenai County sheriff’s deputies offered no motive for the violence.

A 911 dispatcher heard a call for help come over a marine radio frequency Friday night about 11:10, said sheriff’s Sgt. Gerald Wiedenhoff.

Marine deputies found the boat floating on Mica Bay without its navigation lights on about an hour later. Loss was sitting in a chair on the boat’s deck, deputies said.

A bloody towel was found near him, Wiedenhoff said.

When deputies asked Loss where his wife was, he reportedly told them she was in bed, asleep.

Deputies boarded the boat and found Jerrene Loss lying in the main cabin. She had suffered severe injuries to her head and arm, Wiedenhoff said.

Her 26-year-old son, Tim Bollinger, said doctors told him the injuries to his mother were life threatening, but that she had made a slight improvement by Saturday afternoon.

Bollinger was shocked by the violence and spent most of the day “trying to figure out why what happened happened,” he said.

James and Jerrene Loss married more than 10 years ago. After a “rocky” beginning, their relationship had been going well, Bollinger said.

The couple made frequent trips to the lake during the past several summers to relax, said Bollinger, who has been living with his mother and stepfather at their Greenacres home for the past month and a half.

However, Robert Loss of Spokane, who has not spoken to his son in four years, described James Loss as violent. He recalled fighting with his son several times.

, DataTimes