Wednesday, June 03, 2009

Familial Vengeance

A Canadian doctor and his wife, living and working for a decade in Harrodsburg, Kentucky.
Not particularly newsworthy, other than the fact that many medical practitioners who gained their education and professional expertise in Canada have opted to move out to greener fields where government does not seek to intervene in the avails of the practise of private medicine.

Dr. Steven Hall, operating a family medicine practise in Harrodsburg is a respected and highly regarded physician in that community. Town residents and patients of Dr. Hall speak of him as a mild-mannered, kindly man, a trusted doctor, a quiet Canadian. His lawyer informed the Lexington Herald-Leader "what happened in this case was a horrific and very tragic accident, which the family will continue to struggle with emotionally for a long time."

Moreover, he added, Dr. Hall "will continue to maintain his innocence at all stages of these proceedings". The proceedings being a preliminary hearing on a charge of first-degree murder. Mrs. Isabel Hall's two sons with her husband may be the only family members to attend a memorial service for their late mother, at the Harrodsburg church that their family regularly attended. While their father remains incarcerated at the Boyle County Detention Center.

A family disagreement. Admittedly a heated one. Mrs. Hall was a Sydney, Nova Scotia native. He a graduate of Halifax-based Dalhousie University medical school. For both taking a pontoon boat out on Herrington Lake for an invigorating day's boating would have been a natural extension of their maritime experience, growing up in Nova Scotia. They had a disagreement of opinion, and tempers wore thin.

He of the healing arts suffered a severe lapse of moral judgement, forfeiting years of matrimonial dualism in the art of compromise and forgiveness. Their disagreement became heated and he "admitted that he and his wife were in a physical altercation and he threw her off the boat". Steering the vessel purposefully in her direction for the purpose of establishing the correct marriage hierarchy: "to scare her".

Alas, he did more than that, striking her with the boat propeller on the left side of her head according to Boyle Country Coroner Dr. James Ramey. "It also hit her in the left forearm and upper arm, pretty deep cuts that caused instant death." There are no fewer than five witnesses to the unfortunate lapse of temper and the resulting sundering of a marriage. In his defence he did attempt to secure her body before it floated away.

Meeting the police as they arrived post-911 call, at the water's edge, with the late Mrs. Hall in tow.

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