Christine Johnston, a 43-year-old White/Caucasian woman, died on August 5, 2014, after a violent encounter at the Oaks Trailer Park in Mineral Wells, West Virginia. What began as an emergency call for help ended with Wood County sheriff’s deputies discovering Johnston and James Auvil dead inside or at the residence they shared. Authorities subsequently described the deaths as an apparent murder-suicide.
Johnston herself alerted authorities that something was wrong.
On Tuesday morning she called 911 and reported that Auvil was threatening to harm her and was also threatening to kill himself. Deputies were dispatched to the Oaks Trailer Park, but by the time officers reached the scene, the confrontation had already turned deadly. Johnston was found suffering from multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene. Auvil was also found dead, having suffered a single gunshot wound.
Investigators with the Wood County Sheriff’s Department came to believe that Auvil, who was reported to be 53, had used a pistol to shoot Johnston multiple times before turning the weapon on himself. Authorities therefore treated Auvil as the person responsible for Johnston’s killing rather than searching publicly for an unidentified assailant. Contemporary reports described Johnston and Auvil as a couple and indicated that the shootings occurred at their home in the trailer park. Both were pronounced dead there.
The sheriff’s department also said deputies were already familiar with Auvil before the fatal incident, although the available reporting did not explain the nature or extent of their previous dealings with him. Johnston’s 911 call nevertheless provided investigators with important evidence about what had been happening immediately before the shootings: she specifically reported that Auvil was threatening her while simultaneously threatening suicide. That account, together with the physical evidence discovered after deputies arrived, led authorities to conclude that Johnston had been shot by Auvil and that he then died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
There was no subsequent arrest, prosecution, trial or conviction of Auvil because he died at the scene. Initial reports stated that the shootings remained under investigation while authorities worked to establish the circumstances surrounding the deaths, but the case was publicly characterized as an apparent murder-suicide rather than an unsolved homicide involving a fugitive suspect. Johnston’s attempt to summon police shortly before her death remains one of the central details of the case, documenting that she sought emergency assistance as the threats against her escalated into the shooting that took her life.
