ORANGEVILLE, Mich. — A 63-year-old Orangeville Township man is in custody, accused of killing 73-year-old Gary Peake, his next-door neighbor, and a 21-year-old, who happened to be in the area.
Comstock Park High School graduate Bryce Nathan DeGood was the other victim of the Friday afternoon shooting in Barry County.
DeGood was in the neighborhood working as a subcontractor for Consumers Energy.
“I have no idea who he was,” says the wife of the murder suspect. “I think he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The suspect’s wife says she cannot explain the suddenly violent behavior of the man she married 37 years ago.
“That was not him,” she said. “He has never been a violent guy. I don’t know what happened, what snapped.”
She said her husband had no quarrel with Peake and that they were friends.
“We have been friends for years since we moved into the neighborhood in the 1980s," she said. "I feel so bad because I love Gary to death.”
She says she also does not know why DeGood was a target.
“I feel so bad for his family,” she said.
She says repeated brain injuries may explain his sudden violent behavior.
“He has been knocked in the head a number of times,” she says. “In February, he took a tumble down an entire flight of stairs and ended up in intensive care with head injuries and fractures. I think that last head injury is maybe what did it.”
Neighbors say the suspect was friendly and generous. One says he would share venison after a successful deer hunt. He made trees on his property available for firewood.
“Something snapped in his head,” says his wife. “People died for no reason. It is a tragedy.”
13 ON YOUR SIDE is not naming the wife or her husband until he is arraigned on the murder charges.
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