Police chief who accidentally
shot his wife as she slept has been married FOUR times as it emerges she is now
paralyzed from the waist down
• William McCollom, the chief of police in Peachtree City,
Georgia, called 911 on January 1 to say he had accidentally shot his wife,
Margaret
• She is recovering and told investigators she believes it
was accidental
• On the 911 call, it took two minutes for him to admit to
the dispatcher that he was the chief of police
• The incident has sparked a criminal probe and an
investigation into his four decades working for law enforcement
• It has emerged he has been married four times; Margaret
was his third wife and after he recently divorced his fourth wife, they
reconciled
A police chief who accidentally
shot his wife as she slept in their Atlanta home early on New Year's Day has
been married four previous times, an investigation has revealed.
William McCollom, the chief of
police in Peachtree City, told authorities that his gun accidentally went off
as he moved it in the night and now agents from the Georgia Bureau of
Investigation and a local prosecutor are conducting a criminal probe and
examining his career.
His wife, Margaret McCollom,
whom he had previously divorced, is paralyzed from the waist down following the
incident, WSBTV reported. She was released from Atlanta Medical Center earlier
this week.
She told investigators she
cannot shed light on the incident because she was sleeping but that she
believes it was an accident.
Records show that her husband
waited nearly two minutes into the 911 call to mention where he worked.
'You're the chief of police in
Peachtree City?' the dispatcher repeated.
'Yeah, unfortunately, yes,' he
responded.
As soon as the bullet struck
his wife, McCollom's personal life and three-decade history in law enforcement
were bound for intense scrutiny. As the investigation into his past commences,
he also faces an internal inquiry that could result in discipline.
McCollom has gone through four
divorces, including one from Margaret McCollom. It's unclear whether William
and Margaret McCollom ever remarried, though investigators refer to them as
husband and wife.
None of McCollom's divorce
filings indicate he had ever been violent. He married two of the women in
Wyoming, where they remain, and had three children with one.
His fourth wife, previously
named by DailyMail.com as Suzanne Carter, is a rabbi who was the police
department chaplain in Delray Beach, Florida when McCollo, was chief there.
They married in 2002 and
divorced in 2014 after she claims he cheated on her, which he denied.
On the professional front,
hundreds of pages of records from his personnel files contain no evidence of
criminality, major misconduct or recklessness for the former firearms
instructor who once trained a SWAT team on combat shooting.
'Everybody's scratching their
head,' said Michael Couzzo Jr., the village manager who hired McCollom as the
police chief in Tequesta, Florida, in 2006. 'They're scratching their heads
saying, "How could this have happened?"'
Investigators have not publicly
speculated on what led up to the shooting.
Only a few details are known.
McCollom called 911 around 4:17 a.m. and told a dispatcher his handgun fired as
he moved it. McCollom also said he and his wife were sleeping.
He told the 911 dispatcher that
he had shot his wife, a former emergency-room nurse, twice with his
police-issued Glock 9 mm handgun. But it was later determined that she had only
been hit once.
Mrs McCollom told investigators
she was sleeping when shot and couldn't offer more information. The wife said
she thought the shooting was an accident, GBI spokeswoman Sherry Lang said.
If investigators deem the
shooting an accident, a police officer might avoid criminal charges and could
potentially keep his job, said Robert Verry, a longtime internal affairs
investigator in New Jersey and policing instructor. He is not involved in the
probe.
'It's so premature it's tough
to tell,' Verry said. 'The devil's in the details.'
Born in northeast Wyoming,
McCollom, 57, briefly served as a reserve deputy in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in late
1982, according to his resume. County officials could not immediately determine
whether employment records from that period still exist.
McCollom twice married women in
Wyoming, including his second wife, with whom he had three children. Both of
those marriages ended in divorce.
He found a job in 1983 as a
police officer in Delray Beach, Florida, where he worked for 23 years. He rose
through the ranks, eventually becoming the assistant chief.
'His tactics were safe,' said
Delray Beach Police Lt. Vinnie Gray, a union representative who served on the
SWAT team with McCollom. 'It was a shock to see what happened' in Georgia.
In 1988, as McCollom's career
accelerated, he wed Margaret. They divorced 11 years later.
The FBI investigated McCollom
around 1993 over an allegation he knocked out the front teeth of a suspect
arrested for battery on a police officer, McCollom said in a job application.
Old booking photos showed the
accuser did not have teeth prior to the arrest. McCollom said the booking photo
from the arrest in question did not show any injuries.
'The facts and independent
witness testimony proved the subject was lying and the investigation exonerated
me after my initial interview,' McCollom wrote.
McCollom was disciplined once
in 2005 after being accused of ordering a subordinate to request free hotel
rooms for deputy sheriffs, according to his internal affairs file. Delray Beach
Police Chief Larry Schroeder, who counseled McCollom over it, did not return
messages seeking comment.
McCollom got hired as chief of
the small department in Tequesta in 2006, but life drew him back to Wyoming. In
early 2010, McCollom sought unpaid leave, telling colleagues he needed to care
for an ailing sister and help a family construction business.
'I have an opportunity to enter
the private sector as an independent contractor and have decided it is now or
never,' McCollom wrote in a resignation letter.
His fourth wife filed for
divorce in March 2011. Around that time, his former wife, Margaret, rejoined
him in Wyoming, said the chief's sister, Barbara Sutherland.
Sutherland said she believed
the couple remarried after he took the police chief's job in Georgia.
'The second time around, they
grew up, they figured it out,' she said.
