Georgia man accused of killing wife’s divorce lawyer and setting office on fire

A Georgia divorce attorney was a short while ago shot to death – and his office was established on fireplace – by a client’s estranged spouse in an extreme case in point of how contentious US family court docket cases can get, in accordance to authorities.

Law enforcement in the neighborhood of Lawrenceville allege that Allen Tayeh went to the business office of a lawyer representing a female in the system of divorcing him and shot the attorney, Doug Lewis, there on 7 December.

Tayeh is accused of then pouring gasoline all over Lewis’s office environment and lighting the making on fireplace just before firefighters arrived to douse the blaze and uncovered the slain man’s entire body, the regional news outlet KENS noted, citing law enforcement.

A witness exterior the law workplace throughout the fireplace led investigators to Tayeh, who was close by, experienced been burned and was carrying a revolver with put in rounds in its cylinder, police explained to KENS. He was also in an place where there ended up gas cans and which reeked of gasoline, according to officers.

Investigators booked Tayeh on counts of malice murder and arson. The female divorcing him and Lawrence have been scheduled to meet Tayeh in courtroom for a hearing in the upcoming times, law enforcement added.

“It’s really brazen,” a lieutenant for Lawrenceville police, Jake Parker, explained to KENS of Tayeh’s alleged actions. “It’s sort of out of the blue.”

Lewis’s murder and the destruction of his office environment stunned the authorized community in Lawrenceville, a town of 30,000 people just 30 miles from Atlanta.

“Doug was a consummate gentleman,” Lewis’s fellow legal professional, Phil McCurdy, mentioned to KENS the day immediately after the killing. “I by no means read him elevate his voice, I under no circumstances noticed him drop his temper. I under no circumstances observed him treat everyone besides with regard.

“I never know any one who didn’t respect him as a colleague, as a expert and as a human staying.”

A previous regulation lover of Lewis, Jesse Kent, remembered him as an attentive husband to his wife and doting father to his kids.

“He was the regular that all attorneys – which includes me – aspired to be,” Kent wrote in an electronic mail to the community station. “The legal profession will hardly ever be the exact without having him.”

It is unusual for legal professionals to be physically assaulted in excess of the work they do, according to the American Bar Association Journal. But, the ABA Journal included, a collection of surveys in 2018 aiming to measure violence towards lawyers showed that loved ones lawyers ended up extra possible to have been threatened in just the prior year and were being a lot more very likely than lawyers in common to report having been assaulted, especially by someone who had previously threatened them.

That is probable since family legislation conditions, usually centering on divorces and linked kid custody problems, create specifically strong feelings among involved get-togethers, an legal professional interviewed by the journal claimed.