It was just after 3 a.m. in the warm Houston summer of 2019, when first responders arrived at Renard and Patricia Spivey's home and found 52-year-old Patricia dead in the closet from multiple gunshot wounds.FIRST RESPONDER (bodycam): We can definitely see a wound within her abdomen right there. OFFICER: OK. Will it be the entry point? FIRST RESPONDER: It — it looks like it. We don't know if that's the only one but that's definitely one there. … No signs of life. Her husband Renard had a bullet in his leg. He told officers the two had been arguing and fighting over a gun when it fired.OFFICER (bodycam): Where'd you shoot her?RENARD SPIVEY: We was tussling — in the chest and the arm.
Renard Spivey, a sheriff's deputy with Harris County, worked as a bailiff in courts and played a bailiff on TV for "Justice for All with Judge Cristina Perez."Renard didn't say much more about what happened. Police detained him and had him transported to a hospital.Patricia's 83-year-old father, who suffered from dementia, was also living with the Spivey's. He was sleeping when the gunshots erupted. PATRICIA'S FATHER: What — what happened?
OFFICER: You didn't hear anything? PATRICIA'S FATHER: Huh? … I haven't did anything. OFFICER: I know we just need your statement.A STRUGGLE OVER A GUNFirst responders on the scene wondered how a gun could go off multiple times by accident. OFFICER #2 (bodycam): … if you get shot once, you're not gonna make the gun go off again. OFFICER #1: That's what I'm saying.And why a man of Renard's size — around six foot three and weighing around 290 pounds — would need to struggle with his smaller wife to take control over a gun.
