photo credit: Noah Abrams/KRCB
Santa Rosa police respond to a homicide report on Monarch Court in Santa Rosa on January
8, 2025. Police say a man, in his 60's, killed his wife and two adult children at the residence 
before turning the gun on himself.

There have been 15 fatalities over the past year in Sonoma County involving domestic violence.

Two of those happened this month in separate cases.

In the most high profile incident, a 38-year-old mother and Santa Rosa resident was shot by her estranged partner, a Sonoma County sheriff's deputy, before he killed himself after an hours-long standoff with police.

In a later incident, a 20-year-old father and Santa Rosa resident was shot by Santa Rosa police after allegedly committing domestic violence against the mother of his child, and then initiating an hours-long standoff with officers.

To learn more, KRCB's Greta Mart spoke with the Press Democrat reporter covering this story.

You can read their conversation below.

Madison Smalstig: "My name is Madison Smalstig, and I'm a breaking news reporter at the Press Democrat."

Greta Mart: "Just briefly recap what happened [in the high profile incident]?"

MS: "A Sonoma County Sheriff's office deputy who was off duty went to the apartment of his former domestic partner Mari, and...police believe that he shot her and then told a neighbor to call 911, dropped off one of their kids, an infant, with a neighbor and then took off to the Sonoma County Coroner's office location off on Chanate Road in [Santa Rosa] and was in a standoff with law enforcement for multiple hours from around 7:30 P.M. until 2:00 A.M. when he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound."

GM: "Just describe the victim, what you heard in your reporting about the victim."

MS: "Mari worked as a detention specialist at the Sonoma County County Sheriff's office, which is essentially working in records. And how it was described to me is that the workers in this area are often working right next to each other. They're a very close knit unit. She went on a lot of trips with these individuals."

"One person told me about a trip to Disneyland, and others said a trip to Alaska and on cruises. So she knew these people very well and she started at the department in 2013. Some words to describe her have been 'compassionate', a really devoted mother. One of her dreams was to be a mother. She had three children, two twin toddlers and one infant."

"They said she had a kind of grunge style. She wore red lipstick every day. She was wore [Converse] Chuck Taylors and normally wore a plaid shirt. She just was a very kind worker who wanted to kind of bear the load for other people. And since she'd been working there since 2013, she had wide breadth of knowledge in that area."

"Last year, she went down to essentially a position that's less than part time where she could pick up shifts every few months or just whenever fit her schedule. One of the co-workers I talked to mentioned that that's likely because of her taking care of her kids and and wanting to stay home and spend time with them."

GM: "So she did make moves to dissolve this domestic partnership with Deputy Lyle, but she didn't file a domestic abuse report. Tell me about that."

MS: "Correct. So what she filed was essentially a dissolution to her domestic partnership with Jeremy Lyle. Within that document, there's essentially an area where there's like a checklist where the person filing can allege instances of substance abuse or abuse. She had checked a box that essentially said Jeremy Lyle had abused someone within this dynamic. So that could have been a child or a spouse or a partner.

"This is all, you know, language that's already typed into the document. So, she just checked a box. To my knowledge, no formal complaints have been filed regarding domestic violence. Santa Rosa police don't have any records of previous contacts in relation to domestic violence as well."

GM: "Is there any indication that she knew, that she suspected that that he was so deadly?

MS: "I haven't found anything formally indicating that. I've been trying to get in touch with family...most of my contacts have been people she's worked with and she went down in hours quite significantly starting last year, which is when her relationship with Jeremy Lyle was happening."

"According to court documents, it was about April to November of last year that their partnership was official. So yeah, there's there's nothing on an official record outside of, you know, this box checked on this dissolution filing, [that] she was concerned for her or her children's safety."

"If she had filed something directly with the sheriff's office, something would have happened. I spoke with the Sheriff, Eddie Engram and he said that if she had reported something directly to them, they would have opened an internal affairs investigation where Jeremy Lyle likely would have been put on some sort of leave as they continued that investigation, and they would have alerted an outside law enforcement agency to investigate it on a criminal level."

"However, the sheriff's office did not receive notification. She did have an attorney. I suppose maybe the attorney could have asked if she wanted to report, and maybe there's a level to this too where you know she didn't want to report it to law enforcement which is sometimes the

"I spoke with the YWCA Sonoma County CEO, and she talked to me a lot about how it's very difficult for victims to come forward. They have to share a lot of personal details and information and that can be especially traumatizing when you have to release that on a public level."