4th Tacoma Homicide of 2023: Gail Marie Gese
Sixty-six-year-old Gail Marie Gese called 9-1-1 from her house in the 800 block of South Anderson Street just after 6:30am on February 1, 2023. Her 31-year-old son was having a mental health crisis.
Neighbors had often seen her son talking to people who weren’t there or pacing in front of the house. Sometimes he’d walk up and down their alleyway over and over again. Gail said he had undiagnosed schizophrenia. She had been trying to get him help for months if not years. But mental healthcare in Washington State is difficult to find.
Lately, he’d become increasingly difficult to deal with. His hallucinations were getting worse. Shortly after his arrest he’d say, “I was trying to pop the robot’s head off.”
It had gotten to the point where Gail felt for her own safety that she needed her son to stop living at that house. This apparently was what set her son off on this crisis.
Gail was on the phone with 9-1-1 when her son began stabbing her. She screamed “Get out!” and then can be heard saying “Oh my god, oh my god.”
Police arrived ten minutes later. There was no answer when they knocked on the door. So they forced their way in when they observed Gail laying on the ground. She died on the scene becoming Tacoma’s fourth Tacoma homicide of 2023.
Her son was arrested shortly afterword after being found wandering around downtown and after being found competent to stand trial has been charged with her murder.
Gail was a well known and well liked Middle School Teacher at Cedar Point Middle School in Kent. She was born in Oregon, but grew up in Tacoma graduating from Washington High School. From there she went to Washington State University where she got a degree in recreation. She met her husband while at WSU. Later in her life she’d return to college and get a masters degree in Education. She absolutely loved teaching. You kind of have to in order to be a Middle School teacher.
In recent years, her husband developed Alzheimer’s and had dementia. So when she wasn’t teaching or caregiving her son, she was caregiving her husband.
This tragedy is an example of the price in human lives paid for a broken mental healthcare system.
Gail Gese is gone, but her impact on the lives around her, on her colleagues, on her students, and on her community continues. Those of you who knew Gail and want to share thoughts or memories of her, please consider doing so by clicking the comment button below.
- Jack Cameron