Man Shoots Woman, Kills Himself

From WaPo:

By Aaron C. Davis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 16, 2009; B03

A man under a court order to stay away from a Laurel woman shot her in the face as she returned home from church, fled and then committed suicide early yesterday morning on the side of Interstate 95 in Howard County, police said.

Laurel police said Aqil Abdul-Haqq, 32, waited Wednesday night in the 15400 block of Arbory Way for Soyini Taylor, whom he had dated. When she arrived home about 10 p.m., Abdul-Haqq approached and fired. He then stood over her and shot her in the face a second time, police spokesman Jimmy Collins said.

Taylor, 34, was conscious when police arrived. She identified Abdul-Haqq as her attacker, Collins said. She was rushed to a hospital and was upgraded later in the day from critical to serious condition.

At 2 a.m., about four hours after the attack, a Maryland state trooper spotted Abdul-Haqq's 1998 blue Ford Explorer pulled off on the right shoulder of I-95, north of Route 32, state police said.

The trooper ran the license plate number and discovered that the driver was a suspect in the Laurel shooting. The trooper approached the vehicle and found Abdul-Haqq inside, dead of what police said was a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

"I believe he thought he had killed her," Collins said.

Abdul-Haqq, of the 2500 block of Markham Lane in the Hyattsville area, was ordered to stay away from Taylor in a September peace order issued in District Court in Hyattsville. Three months earlier, an order that he stay away from another woman was dropped when the woman failed to appear in court.

In October and November, Abdul-Haqq, a former Navy seaman, twice violated the terms of his peace order with Taylor. He was scheduled to appear in court later this month for the October violation.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.