A Connecticut man accused of randomly attacking a couple at their Tennessee home was shot Monday while being arrested and died at a hospital, police said.
Peter Alexander Bohning, 34, of Kent, Connecticut, was wounded Monday during the altercation in Gaines County, Texas, where a deputy found the man who was wanted on murder and attempted murder charges after allegedly attacking Donald Zirkle, 59, and his wife, Leigh Ann Zirkle, 58, at their Nashville home on Friday, police announced on Twitter.
Bohning died from his injuries at a hospital in Texas after the confrontation, Nashville police said.
Donald Zirkle, who was stabbed, was pronounced dead at a hospital after the attack, while Leigh Ann Zirkle survived but remains hospitalized with “significant wounds,” including to her neck, the News-Times reports. She remained hospitalized as of Monday, the Tennessean reports.
Police told WKRN that Leigh Ann Zirkle managed to communicate to detectives after the attack that she and her husband were sitting on their back porch when a stranger approached and asked for directions before attacking them.
Bohning was apprehended as the deputy responded to a call about a suspicious vehicle: the Zirkles’ 2010 gray Toyota Camry that investigators said was stolen from their home after the random attack. The unidentified deputy was stabbed as he took Bohning into custody, although his injuries are not expected to be life-threatening, police said.
His mother, Sue Ellen Bohning, told the News-Times that he suffered from mental health issues, but said she didn’t think the college graduate who once worked on Wall Street was capable of carrying out such an attack.
“I don’t know if my son did that murder in Tennessee,” she said. “It doesn’t sound like him.”
Sue Ellen Bohning, 75, said she and her husband had not seen their son after he left their home a week ago after being put on probation in April in connection with a 2015 robbery arrest in New York City. He was concerned that the three-year sentence would hamper his job prospects, she said.
“We tried to stop him,” Bohning told the newspaper prior to his arrest. “What he’s doing in Tennessee, I don’t know.”
Bohning said she thought her son was headed to nearby Danbury to sell computer software or to China, where he believed he had a job opportunity.
She described her son as an intelligent man who graduated from Bard College in New York after taking the SATs before he was even a teenager. He then worked on Wall Street for several years before leaving the finance industry in 2007 after being robbed in Brooklyn, which led to his mental health problems, his mother told the newspaper.