Police: Deputy found dead in Gig Harbor home

The Pierce County Sheriffs deputy, who was believed to have shot his mother-and father-in-law on Friday evening, was found dead by the Tacoma Police Department SWAT team early Saturday morning, according to Tacoma Police spokeswoman Detective Gretchen Aguirre.

Pierce County Sheriff's Department spokesman Ed Troyer identified the deputy as Allen Myron, 49, and said the shooting occurred in his house in the 10000 block of 58th Street Northwest.

Troyer said the father-in-law's body is still in the house.

The mother-in-law called 911 at 6:48 p.m., then crawled out of the house and into the woods, Troyer told The News Tribune of Tacoma. She was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Later, Pierce County Det. Sgt. Jerry Bates said she had died. The names of the two dead were not released.

The whereabouts of Myron's wife were unknown, according to Aguirre a spokeswoman for the Tacoma Police Department, which is handling the investigation.

Late Friday, the children were no longer in the house and safe.

According to public records, Myron has been with the Sheriff's Department for 11 years. Property records for the house where the shooting occurred show it is owned by Allen and Sara Myron.

According to a website for Sara's personal chef's business, she lives in Gig Harbor with her husband and their four children.

A friend of the family who asked not to be named said two children are between 18 and 23 and the other two are younger.

Myron had been cleared to come back to work three months ago after being on medical light duty for a year and a half, Troyer said.

"This is somebody we've had issues with before," Troyer told the News Tribune of Tacoma. "The preliminary information is he was cleared to come back to work."

In 2007, Myron was given a "Medal of Merit" at an awards ceremony for the sheriff's department, according to The News Tribune.

"Squared-away guy"

Neighbor Dana Malich said she lives behind the deputy's family. The Myron family has lived there since Malich moved in 11 years ago.

Malich said she was at home with her kids around 6:40 p.m. when "I heard a loud bang from the house behind. I didn't think anything of it."

Malich said people often shoot paint balls in the heavily wooded neighborhood. She said she and her kids went into Gig Harbor to get dinner, and when they came home a couple hours later, they were blocked from their street by police.

She said she knows Myron, and he is "a good person."

Neighbor Weldon Wilson, a retired state trooper, said whenever he saw Myron, the two would talk about law-enforcement issues. "He seemed like a pretty squared-away guy," Wilson said.

Another neighbor, Howard Larsen, said he came home after 6:30 p.m. and heard a man screaming a name that sounded like "Ellen" or "Allen." Another neighbor, who had been home earlier, told Larsen he'd heard two shots, Larsen said.

Larsen said he thinks Myron and his family have lived in that neighborhood about 10 to 15 years.

"When he was building the house, he was very congenial," Larsen said. But "we didn't really socialize with them."

The Myrons are a churchgoing family, according to the family friend, who said they attend Fox Island Alliance Church.

The Brame case

It is the second time in recent memory that a law-enforcement officer was involved in a fatal domestic-violence situation in Gig Harbor.

In April 2003, Tacoma Police Chief David Brame shot his 35-year-old estranged wife and himself in a strip-mall parking lot in Gig Harbor.

David Brame, 44, died at a hospital a short time after the shooting, and his wife, Crystal, died a week later.

Seattle Times staff reporters Christine Clarridge, Jennifer Sullivan and Janet I. Tu, and Times researchers Miyoko Wolf and David Turim contributed to this report.

A previous version of this story, published on May 14, mischaracterized the events surrounding the 2003 shooting involving then-Tacoma Police Chief David Brame. Brame came across his estranged wife by happenstance in a parking lot in Gig Harbor, where he shot her and then shot himself. Brame was sitting in his wife's car and she was standing alongside it when the shooting occurred. This story was corrected on May 19, 2010.