Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Anniversary: The Grunas Murder-Suicide

On August 4, 2006, 30-year-old Laura Grunas, a police officer in Plantation, Florida, shot her boyfriend, 31-year-old Robert Peat, dead inside his home. Grunas then turned the gun on herself. The couple had been together for about a year.

Neighbors reported that Laura was hysterical the last day of her life, standing outside Peat's garage yelling, "Why is everyone blaming this on me? He killed my baby." The argument became so loud that neighbors called the police.

In what those close to the pair believed to have been a mutual decision, Laura had aborted the couple's baby a few weeks earlier. Michael Roth, a friend of Peat, told police that Peat had been "enormously upset" about the legal abortion. "He was a lot more religious than me and didn't believe in that, but they had felt that that was the right thing to do for whatever reasons."

Peat had called Roth and asked him to come over shortly before the shooting. Roth said that when he arrived, Grunas became upset, saying, "If, when he felt the need to call, did he tell you about killing my baby?"

Peat also called the police, and when two officers arrived, Grunas, a colleague of theirs, became furious. They asked her to leave, and she complied. Peat asked Roth to remain with him, and Roth recommended that Peat get a restraining order. "Thirty seconds after I tried to make that suggestion, his phone started ringing. .... And then she started banging on the front door."

Laura then used a Smith & Wesson 9mm, her work-issued handgun, to shoot out the sliding glass door to the kitchen. Roth, who suffered minor injuries in the incident, fled the kitchen through the shot-out door and called 911.

Laura had been a police officer in Plantation for about five years, and none of her colleagues suspected that she was troubled. But Roth, in whom Peat had confided about the abortion, told investigators that the couple's relationship had been increasingly rocky since the abortion.

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5 comments:

Tonal Bliss said...

It might be impossible to know, but did Laura Grunas have any type of mental illness?

Sometimes the insane can illustrate the inner mind of the sane. I wish that there was more research into how "therapeutic" abortion affects a woman's emotional and mental state.

I truly hate hearing pro-choicers proclaim "oh, well, it helps the woman" without any evidence what-so-ever. They can't even produce very many strong anecdotal evidence either.

army_wife said...

When I read a "testemonial", if you will, from a pro-"choice" woman about how much her abortion "helped" her, it gives me a cold feeling inside. How cold must her heart be, to murder her child and be so nonchalant, even glad, about it?

I try to avoid those types of websites, etc. but I think that if every woman who has an abortion were surveyed about it a year or two years later, the majority would report feeling at least some misgivings if not some severe problems such as mental illness (such as depression), substance abuse, suicidal thoughts, self-destructive behavior (example: excessive risk-taking, cutting), and that sort of thing.

Operation Outcry is one organization I know of that is trying to get the word out about the harmful effects of abortion on the woman. They have many women who are willing to come forth and discuss these sensitive things. I am sure there are probably other organizations and other post-abortive women with the same goal. I even came across an organization once (although I can't remember the name now) that provides a place for the fathers of aborted babies can speak out about how it affected them.

I'm glad that this information is finally starting to seep out. I'm in agreement with you, though, SegaMon... I'd be interested to see some large, peer-reviewed studies on the subject as well as more men and women willing to publicly speak out about how negative the abortion experience really is for them.

Kathy said...

Army_wife,

I'm currently in a bit of a debate with disbelieves post-abortion syndrome, and has said something about a study to that effect. Of course, I can't read the study, so I can't tell about bias or flaws in it. I'm not going to debate the question about whether or not PAS exists, because I have studies that say one thing, and she has studies that say another, and we'll each disbelieve the other's studies, so it's a pointless argument to go there.

However, when she mentioned the study (it was a 13-year follow-up, I think, so it was plenty of space after the abortion), I wondered how many women would automatically answer the questionnaire in a shallow, perhaps even flippant manner -- even putting down answers that they thought society expected of them. I'm reminded of the scene in "Return to Me" in which Minnie Driver, in a follow-up visit to her doctor after her heart transplant, is asked, "How're you doing?" And she answers with more zeal than she feels, "Fine. Fine. Of course I'm fine! [nervous laughter, obvious discomfort] Why wouldn't I be fine?" But she has "survivor guilt," as is evidenced by another line said sadly or pensively, "I'm alive because someone else is dead." She feels like she shouldn't ever be sad because she was given such a great opportunity to live that she should never be dragged down by the normal emotions of human existence. Like she should live in a bubble or on a cloud somewhere, untouched by negativity, due to her second chance.

I wonder how many post-abortive women are like that -- they've heard since childhood the refrain that abortion is a good thing, doesn't kill a baby, is the right choice for a single woman, keeps her from being the dreaded single mom, etc., so they feel like they *should* say that they are "fine" and "relieved" and there aren't any problems... when in reality, they are tormented with nightmares about the abortion, and carry a deep sense of grief and regret.

One of the things that helped me shape my opinion on that was one study I came across when researching something else, in which a scientist or doctor of some sort (perhaps a psychiatrist or some other mental doctor) discovered that while women will put one thing in a questionnaire (no, I'm still glad I had my abortion), when they dig down deep, they come up with a multitude of mental problems, traced back to their abortions.

Anonymous said...

That bitch was a mean cop a lying one at that i feel sorry for the boyfriend

Anonymous said...
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