Meleanie Hain: Gun-Carrying Soccer Mom Killed By Husband In Murder Suicide, Police Say (VIDEO)

LEBANON, Pa. - A soccer mom who was thrust into the national gun-rights debate after taking a loaded pistol to youth sports events was killed by her husband in a shooting witnessed online by her video chat partner, authorities said Friday.

Scott Hain used his own gun to fire several shots into his 30-year-old wife, Meleanie, while her video chat was active and perhaps as she washed dishes in their kitchen, police said. Scott Hain, 33, later killed himself in an upstairs bedroom.

Meleanie Hain's loaded pistol -- with a bullet ready in the chamber -- was in a backpack hanging from the front door.

The couple's three young children were home just before the murder-suicide, but authorities stopped short of saying they were home at the time. The online friend heard a shot and screams and turned to see Scott Hain firing, they said.

He "observed Scott Hain standing over where Meleanie was and discharging a handgun several times," Lebanon Police Chief Daniel Wright said at a news conference. The man, who was described as a friend of both Scott and Meleanie Hain, called 911.

"He kept open his Web cam episode; however, he heard nothing or saw nothing after that," Wright said. The chat was apparently not recorded.

Meleanie Hain became a voice of the gun-rights movement last year when she fought for the right to carry a holstered pistol at her young daughter's soccer games. Other parents complained, prompting a sheriff to revoke her concealed-weapons permit, a decision a judge later overturned.

"I'm just a soccer mom who has always openly carried (a firearm), and I've never had a problem before," Hain said last fall. "I don't understand why this is happening to me."

The Hains later sued the sheriff who had revoked her gun permit. The $1 million suit, which claims they suffered emotional distress and lost customers for her home baby-sitting service, remains pending against Lebanon County Sheriff Michael DeLeo.

Scott Hain, a parole officer, owned the 9 mm handgun used to kill his wife. He then killed himself with a shotgun, authorities said after Friday's autopsies. Police found several handguns, a shotgun, two rifles and several hundred rounds of ammunition in their Lebanon home, as well as six spent shell casings in the kitchen.

Friends and neighbors told police the couple had been having marital problems, but police knew of no immediate cause of the violence. Scott Hain was living at the family home at the time, Wright said.

Their three children are ages 2, 6 and 10.

Neighbor Aileen Fortna has said the children told another neighbor that "daddy shot mommy."

The judge who restored Meleanie Hain's concealed-weapon permit last year questioned her judgment and said she had "scared the devil" out of other parents at the soccer field.

• Click Here For Video: Melanie Hain's Mom Reacts | WGAL

Comments

[rootbeerpies]

08:09 PM on 10/12/2009

G-d Bless the m*****f****** NRA and it's campaign to turn this nation into one large battlezone.

As Josh Sugarmann explains above, gun ownership DOES NOT guarantee, or even increase the likelihood of, your safety!

[OdinsEye]

04:12 PM on 10/13/2009

No one has said that a firearm guarantees safety. That is a strawman created by Josh.

[jbinders]

05:20 PM on 10/12/2009

How Ironic...I feel bad for her kids...

[skibiketrash]

04:41 PM on 10/12/2009

Live by the sword, die by the sword. I feel very sorry for the children!

[Zelyony1750]

03:11 AM on 10/12/2009

What a hoorible thing to do to your spouse and to your children! Here is a thought; I wonder what did his psychologist say or write about him in the last evaluation? It would be interesting to know. What kinds of marital problems did they have? One aspect of marriage that can be troubling is the notion that you "own" your spouse. A Parole officer! You would think that he was able to stop and think it through. I guess not. Poor little kids; to have seen such a horror! It will be with them forever!
So what is a person supposed to do? Wear a bullet-proof vest to bed?
Al lwe can do is pray for that family.

[OdinsEye]

04:14 PM on 10/13/2009

"I wonder what did his psychologist say or write about him in the last evaluation? "

You are assuming he has ever had an eval. Many departments do not require such things.

"A Parole officer! You would think that he was able to stop and think it through. "

Law enforcement officers have a high rate of marital problems and suicides.

[StephenBP]

12:34 PM on 10/10/2009

Lost in this discussion is how much a gun changes the dynamics of any situation. When a cop has a gun, you at least expect or hope that they have had basic or better yet, advanced gun training, and have been vetted at some point for a minimum degree of stability. When your neighbor sports a gun at a social event, the dynamics of open-ness and free communication suddenly change. It now becomes a situation where everybody isn't relatively equal all of a sudden. Now one of us can suddenly kill a bunch of us quickly by accident or intent. The fear of hypothetical psychos on the loose is replaced by the need to know a whole lot quickly about someone who is here and real with a deadly weapon and you don't even want to ask why in case they flip out and kill you. The fun drains out of the interaction. The gun problem still needs to be discussed a whole lot more fully and dispassionately.

[HisXLNC]

04:00 AM on 10/11/2009

Melanie Hain's husband was trained and vetted.

It doesn't seem to have worked very well.

[Mariosright]

08:28 AM on 10/10/2009

She wore her gun to those dangerous kiddie soccer games, guess the place she really needed it was in the kitchen.

[TonyLiPira]

02:37 AM on 10/10/2009

I feel disgusted that this poor woman's death is being celebrated by gun opponents. The irony is not lost on me, but blaming the gun accomplishes nothing. This woman was a victim of domestic violence, which is the proverbial elephant-in-the-room here. Gun control would have done nothing to save this woman. In a world without guns, would this crime have occurred? I believe so. Her husband was clearly a violent, abusive man on a power trip. Everyone knows that domestic abuse is about the abuser controlling the victim. I'm no shrink, but I it's my opinion that murder/suicide is the abuser's ultimate power fantasy. The abuser ends his and the victim's family, relationship, and lives in one swoop, by his own hands. The guns in this case are just the means to an end. Without guns, he could have just as easily strangled her and then hung himself.

[buddhaboy]

10:03 AM on 10/10/2009

And the proliferation of handguns right down tho the soccer field did nothing to save her either. What is your point?

[joependleton]

10:22 AM on 10/10/2009

He didn't, though. And I think you're reading "celebration" into those comments. I don't see it, but then I'm not a gun rights advocate either.

[myjoyy]

01:06 AM on 10/10/2009

I read on another post regarding guns that law abiding citizens did not go around killing people, only criminals did. Another comment was guns don't kill, people do. This story is an example of how law abiding citizens become criminals when they shoot and kill someone with a gun. Just another reminder that all the guns in the country are not in the hands of the violent, hardened and suspected criminals. The guns that don't kill and the bullet with no name on it is often used by the least likely person in an attempted murder, murder or suicide. We see and hear it too many times - "He was the best neighbor" "They were a great family" "I never would have thought". So to argue that only hard-core criminals commit acts of violence with guns is not a valid or well-founded argument. Given the perfect storm, a gun in the wrong hands can be deadly. And sometimes those are the hands of those considered good law abiding citizens. Again, my comment is in rebuttal that hardened/career criminals are the only ones we have to worry about carrying guns and it has nothing to do with anybody's right to bear arms.

[KOisGod]

12:52 AM on 10/10/2009

Guns don't kill people, but it sure makes it easy to do when there are guns around. Be careful what you ask for America, love your guns, love your freedom, but everything comes at a price.

[austin4]

12:32 AM on 10/10/2009

Oh well!!!!! Those G uns should be ba nned.

[HumeSkeptic]

12:29 AM on 10/10/2009

Intentionally or not, all opponents of strict gun ownership laws support gun violence.
.

[BryantG]

12:25 AM on 10/10/2009

I've heard that a gun is much more likely to be used (accidentally or intentionally) against a friend or family member of the owner than on a criminal or intruder.

[RamuelMRaagas]

12:56 AM on 10/10/2009

Did you hear that from your own uncle?

[Mariosright]

08:19 AM on 10/10/2009

News this morning that a Fla man shot his wife in the chest thinking she was an intruder. So far it is being treated as accidental. So much for knowing what your target is.

[OdinsEye]

04:17 PM on 10/13/2009

That stat was from a flawed study which has been soundly refuted and the study was not peer reviewed before publication.

[Tom Joad]

12:10 AM on 10/10/2009

Where's all the CCW advocates tonight? They're always here telling us how they will one day be heroes when they get to discharge their CW on a bad guy.

[PavePusher]

04:48 PM on 10/10/2009

We are watching all you anti-rights people make utter fools of yourselves gleefully posting your self-appointed superiority and ignorance.

Bigotry, not just for Conservatives anymore...

[OdinsEye]

04:18 PM on 10/13/2009

:)

[iMissMollyIvins]

12:08 AM on 10/10/2009

First of all, I'm sorry for the loss this woman's children have suffered.

Secondly, what does this do to the GunNuts' argument that a person carrying a firearm could stop a tragedy like this?

[A Meat Beetle]

12:40 AM on 10/10/2009

Don't take their silly fantasies away from them. It's all they have left.

[HisXLNC]

03:14 AM on 10/10/2009

She wasn't carrying a firearm, so it does nothing.

[leopoldmozart]

12:04 AM on 10/10/2009

Meleanie Hain is just one more of the 1200 women who will be murdered this year by their boyfriends or husbands. That's the real story, and it has nothing to do with gun ownership.

One third of all women who are murdered are murdered by husbands, boyfriends, or ex's. As a society, we must somehow encourage this behavior (these kinds of murders are extremely rare in Europe, for example). Also, our totally inadequate response to violence against women by their partners (e.g. call the police? Tell that to Nicole Brown Simpson. Restraining order? Don't make me laugh...) totally encourages escalation of violence.

We're missing the real story here.

[HumeSkeptic]

12:35 AM on 10/10/2009

What about all those school sh00tings and the other 10,000 or so dea-ths because of hand guns every year? Are all those because of violence against women, and not because we have too many guns?

[LateForTheSky]

12:39 AM on 10/10/2009

You're absolutely right.