Dustin Tuttle and his girlfriend were sleeping in bed together early the morning of July 5 when they heard a gunshot, and then Tuttle’s mother “started running through the house screaming.”
They awoke, but the 26-year-old Tuttle never made it out of the bedroom. His father, Carroll Tuttle Jr., entered and shot his son in the head with his girlfriend by his side. He told the girlfriend he wasn’t going to hurt her and she fled, according to the transcript of a 911 call made by the girlfriend’s mother.
Tuttle Jr. “said he was going to kill himself,” the girlfriend, whose name has not been released, told her mother.
Transcripts of two 911 calls that morning add a few details about the shootings by Tuttle Jr. that left his wife, 53-year-old Lori Hayden, son Dustin Tuttle and a neighbor Michael Spaulding dead, and wounded Tuttle Jr.’s brother in law, Harvey Austin. The Morning Sentinel obtained the transcripts Monday through a Freedom of Access Act request.
Release of the transcripts comes as the Maine Attorney’s General’s Office continues to investigate the shootings, which ended when deputies from the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office shot and killed Tuttle Jr. in his driveway.
Tuttle Jr., 51, shot and killed his wife, 53-year-old Lori Hayden, and their son just before 7:30 a.m. at their home at 316 Russell Road, according to police.
Police said Tuttle Jr. then shot and killed Mike R. Spaulding, 57, at his home at 299 Russell Road, before returning to the area of his home and shooting and wounding Harvey Austin, 57, of Skowhegan, who survived and is recovering.
Quotes taken from the 911 call transcripts.
A 911 call received at 7:48 a.m. appears to have come from the mother of Dustin Tuttle’s girlfriend, who told a dispatcher that her daughter hadn’t seen Tuttle Jr. shoot his wife, but heard it. “He shot her boyfriend in the head with her laying right beside him,” the girlfriend’s mother said.
Somerset County Sheriff Dale Lancaster declined to comment further or clarify the sequence of events that morning, but said he may be able to say more later this week.
The first 911 call came in at 7:37 a.m. and appears to have come from the girlfriend of the family’s neighbor, 57-year-old Mike R. Spaulding. Police have confirmed that Spaulding’s girlfriend was at his home at the time of the shooting and called 911.
According to some sources, Tuttle Jr. committed the murders because he thought his wife was having an affair with Spaulding. But Michael J. Spaulding, his son, said that wasn’t true, and that his father was trying to get Hayden out of an abusive relationship with Tuttle Jr.
Spaulding’s girlfriend told the dispatcher that her boyfriend was shot by “a man in a gray pickup,” which is what Tuttle Jr. drove to the house. Spaulding wasn’t awake or breathing well and was bleeding, his girlfriend told the dispatcher.
When she said his heart wasn’t moving, the dispatcher instructed her on how to do CPR.
“I can do this, honey, got to get all this blood out of here,” Spaulding’s girlfriend said in the 911 call. Soon after, a deputy arrived and the call ends.
Three Somerset County Sheriff’s deputies – Chief Deputy James Ross, his son Detective Michael Ross, and Deputy Joseph Jackson – responded to the calls, shooting and killing Tuttle Jr. in a gunfight after he had killed Hayden, Tuttle and Spaulding.
Austin was taken to the Redington-Fairview General Hospital in Skowhegan and then to Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor by LifeFlight helicopter. He has since been released.
Madeline St. Amour — 861-9239
mstamour@centralmaine.com
Twitter: @madelinestamour
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