Desmonds ‘working to be a family’ as they struggled with former soldier’s PTSD
HALIFAX — Former soldier Lionel Desmond and his wife Shanna were in counselling as the pair struggled to deal with his post-traumatic stress disorder, and she seemed content the day before they died in a murder-suicide, friends and family said.
“They were working to be a family,” Rev. Elaine Walcott, a relative, said Friday. “They were working against a common enemy: PTSD.”
And in the days before tragedy struck Tuesday, when Lionel Desmond fatally shot his family and then himself, it appeared the enemy was on the run.
Sheila Pelly, another family friend, said she met with Shanna Desmond and their daughter Aaliyah the night before the killings.