Protective Order Details Husband's Behavior Before Norman Murder-Suicide

Court records show Laura East filed for a protective order against her husband, Darrel East, on June 18. The two had been separated.

Court records also show the petition for the protective order was dismissed on the petitioner's motion shortly after. But her family is adamant that was not the case.

Laura’s relatives told News 9 she was at the hospital on Friday to visit her mother, who had just undergone surgery at the Norman HealthPlex. Then, her husband Darrel East showed up uninvited.

“He said, ‘If you’ll just give me two minutes, then I’ll leave you alone.’ And she walked out with him and that’s when he murdered her,” Maxine Rose, Laura East's aunt, said.

The scene was grisly for witnesses both in the parking lot and for those in the hospital.

“They’re in the car. They’re bleeding still. The woman is trying to say they’re bleeding to death,” a caller told 911 dispatchers Friday.

“I shut my window blinds instantly and ran to one of the nurses,” said KeKe Dunn, who was on the first floor of the hospital when the murder-suicide happened.

Rose said Laura East and her husband were not trying to reconcile.

“She was trying to get away from him. And that’s why he killed her because she would not go back to him,” Rose said.

In her protective order filed against Darrel East about a month before he killed her, Laura East told police he'd been showing up at her work, yelling and cussing at her and following her inside. She added Darrel East "told me he was going to take care of me."

Darrel East followed her to the court clerk’s office where she filed the petition for the protective order, she wrote. It was dismissed 11 days later.

But as women's advocate Vanessa Morrison explained, it was just a piece of paper anyway.

“A lot of times getting one can make your situation a lot more dangerous,” Morrison said.

Rose said even if the protective order may not have stopped Darrel's behavior that day, she believes it would've at least stopped him from getting into the hospital.

Unfortunately, Morrison hears about these kinds of cases every day in Oklahoma.

“It’s very heartbreaking and it is a silent epidemic that so many people experience,” she said.

Morrison hopes this family's turmoil and loss can be turned into motivation for others to speak up.

“It only empowers the abuser when we stay silent,” she said.

Cleveland County’s hotline for victims who experience domestic abuse is answered 24/7. If you need help, call (405) 701-5540.