Husband Tells Tale Of Cruel Death Shocking Suicide Leaves Him Wondering Why

All he wanted to do was calm her down.

It was Thanksgiving Day. Paul and Gail McCarthy, and their two sons, had just made a hasty exit from her stepparents’ home in Elk. Gail had been yelling and swearing at her sisters.

“I was talking to her in a soft voice,” Paul McCarthy said Saturday. “But she wouldn’t listen … or look at me. She’s saying that she hates them all (her family).”

As McCarthy drove his wife and boys home in a Chevy S-10 Blazer, he said she suddenly screamed, “I’m going to kill myself!”

“She unlocked her door and said, ‘I’m committing suicide.’ … And she jumped. Just like that.

“I reached, and she was gone. I hit the brakes and stopped, but it was too late.

“I did a U-turn, stepped out and thought maybe there’s a chance she’s all right. But the position her body was in was just horrible.”

She jumped from the Blazer in the 7800 block of East Elk-Chattaroy Road as it was traveling nearly 60 mph.

Paul McCarthy, a 39-year-old press operator, was transferred from nights to days a week ago at Nott-Atwater Co. in the Valley. He wanted to spend more time with Gail, 47, and their sons, Sean, 5, and Caleb, 3.

Until his wife’s fatal leap, McCarthy said things seemed to be getting better, not worse.

She had been getting along better with Amy, a 15-year-old daughter from her first marriage. The girl lives in San Francisco with her father and was in Spokane for the holidays.

And the McCarthys were preparing to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary on Saturday. He bought her an outfit. Now she’ll be buried in it.

McCarthy blamed alcohol for his wife’s death.

Before leaving their northeast Spokane home on Thanksgiving, she went to a corner store and bought a six-pack of Rainier Ice beer. She spent all morning preparing a green-bean casserole and gelatin dish for the family gathering.

McCarthy said she drank three beers after having just a cup of yogurt to eat all day.

“For her, five to six beers on a special day like this was not out of the ordinary,” he said. “On this particular day, it must have hit her the wrong way.”

McCarthy met Gail in October 1991. They married 14 months later. He said she never attempted suicide, never talked about taking her own life.

She came from a close family that gathered often during the year, he said.

But, he added: “She’s been known to be hot-tempered. I think the alcohol must have done enough to get under her skin. Something that was pretty small became big.”

Shortly after arriving at her stepparents’ home, Gail McCarthy started using profanities in casual conversation, her husband said.

One of her sisters asked her to stop swearing because children were present. Gail took offense and started swearing at her sister, McCarthy said.

When another sister intervened she started swearing at her.

“Alcohol is poison, it distorts you and makes you do crazy things,” McCarthy said.

“This was just a dumb, petty thing that could have happened to any family on any special occasion,” he said.

“The sisters she was having that argument with she loved dearly, and they loved her dearly. This was truly a tragedy. I have lost the one joy and happiness of my life.”

, DataTimes