Two Teachers Gunned Down by Their Partners

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UPPER MARLBORO, MD — ”I’m her husband.”

They were the last words witnesses heard before Gladys Tordil was gunned down sitting in her SUV in a high school parking lot.

Police have accused her estranged husband, Eulalio Tordil, of shooting her May 5 before turning the gun on a good samaritan who had, moments earlier, noticed the couple struggling and asked Gladys Tordil if everything was OK.

A 62-year-old federal officer, Eulalio Tordil is accused of shooting four more people the next day. In all, police say he killed three people and injured three others before he was taken into custody in a shopping mall parking lot.

It was a sensational tragedy that drew national media to the D.C. suburbs involved.

The death of Gladys Tordil in that parking lot hits a community grappling with the fact that she had received a protective order that forbid her husband from coming near her home, workplace or children.

And only four months earlier, another teacher in Prince George’s County was killed in a domestic dispute.

NeShante Alesha Davis and her small daughter were gunned down while getting into a car on Feb. 2. The father of her child has been charged by police, accused of killing the two over Davis’ demands for child support.

Nationwide, between 1,200 and 1,300 women are killed each year in the United States by a partner. That's an average of three homicides a day, says the National Network to End Domestic Violence.

Between 1987 and 2015, a total of 1,738 people died in Maryland from domestic violence. That number includes both victims and abusers -- some deaths were cases of murder-suicide -- and the state advocate says the early tracking numbers may not be totally accurate.

Community Impact of Domestic Violence

Now, a community still reflecting on what it could have done to protect Davis faces an eerily similar tragedy and the same questions. Both women were gunned down by former partners who lay in wait for them, say police, Davis by the father of her young daughter and Tordil by her estranged husband.

“This is a really big issue for us and for the county,” said Theresa Mitchell Dudley, president of the Prince George’s County Educators Association. “The one thing that’s striking in both of these cases is that both of these women were estranged. A lot of times (there’s a) dominant partner. Because they’re so controlling, it’s not until they’ve lost the control over that person that they kill somebody.”

The staff and teachers of Parkdale High School served as Gladys Tordil’s surrogate family and as a result they celebrated many holidays, birthdays, and other special occasions together.

“Gladys loved being a teacher and most of all she loved the community and families she served at Parkdale High School,” school officials said in a statement upon her death. “She believed in her students and always pushed them to do their best. She was fun-loving, challenging, and serious about the business of learning chemistry.”

The school system’s teachers and staff have wrapped their arms around the schools of the fallen teachers to share love and nurturing with the students, Dudley Mitchell said.

“Teachers spend more time with the children sometimes than the parents do (during the week). It is very challenging, the kids don’t understand,” Dudley Mitchell said. “It takes some time for people to heal, just like any family and a schoolhouse is a family.” she said.

Regardless of the eventual verdicts in the murder trials for the two accused shooters, the cases will have a lasting impact on the issue of domestic violence in Prince George’s County.

The Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence says that 42 people died in domestic violence cases between July 2014 and June 2015 in the state. Fourteen of those deaths were in Prince George’s County.

“I don’t know how you explain any of these tragedies to children. It’s hard, it’s really hard,” said Michaele Cohen, executive director of the Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence. The statewide coalition is dedicated to the elimination of domestic violence through education, training and advocacy.

Part of Cohen’s work is to follow court proceedings such as the trials for the accused killers of Davis and Tordil. Her team will work to learn if either Gladys Tordil or NeShante Davis reached out to local domestic violence programs, to understand in detail the chronology of their deaths, and assess whether anything could have been done to prevent the deaths.

The Case for Protective Orders

While Gladys Tordil had received a protective order that her spouse ignored, the orders are usually successful, Cohen told Patch.

Roughly 20,000 no-contact orders are issued each year, Cohen said, and out of that 34 people were killed between July 1, 2014, and June 2015 in Maryland by domestic violence. So a huge portion of people are being protected by the orders, which must be combined with safety planning and other services.

“Most people will obey a court order because they can go to jail (if they ignore the order),” Cohen said. “A lot of people don’t want that to happen.”

Access to guns in society is also a factor in the women’s deaths, she said. Eulalio Tordil bought the gun he reportedly used out of state and the absence of a national registry meant local police officers weren’t aware he had hidden a weapon after his supervisors removed guns from his home.

“This man was bent on doing this and didn’t care who he killed in the process,” Cohen said of Eulalio Tordil.

»Emergency Contacts: Where Domestic Violence Victims Can Find Help

Child Support Enrages Father

Davis’ former boyfriend, Daron Maurice Boswell-Johnson, 25, of Forestville was reportedly enraged that he had recently been ordered to pay $600 a month child support.

According to Maryland online court records, elementary school teacher Davis, 26, took the suspect to court last year. A paternity test found that Boswell-Johnson was the father of two-year-old Chloe Nichole Davis-Green. A Prince George’s County judge in December 2015 ordered Boswell-Johnson to pay child support.

According to charging documents, Boswell-Johnson drove to Davis’ apartment on Feb. 2, parked on the street and waited for her to come out to her car. When he saw Davis, Boswell-Johnson “approached her at gunpoint and demanded that she drop her ongoing child support petition,” documents say.

He then shot both mother and daughter multiple times in the upper body and fled, police say. Officers found Chloe lying on the back seat of her mother’s car, while Davis was lying next to the vehicle. She was pronounced dead at the scene; her daughter died at an area hospital.

Prince George’s County Police arrested Boswell-Johnson later that day and say he admitted shooting Davis and the couple’s daughter.

He faces two counts of first- and second-degree murder.

Estranged Husband Opens Fire at High Point High School

Gladys Tordil, 44, was waiting in her SUV May 5 at High Point High School as her two daughters finished after-school activities.

A March court order in a custody case required her estranged husband to stay away from his wife, her home and her workplace, which was Parkdale High School in Riverdale. The protective order also forced Eulalio Tordil to turn over his federally issued service weapon, as well as six other firearms. His supervisors with the Federal Protective Service assigned him to desk duty while he was barred from carrying a weapon.

Investigators say Eulalio followed his wife onto school property when she went to pick up her teenage daughters, and confronted Gladys as she sat in her vehicle.

A witness told police that as they walked toward the victim’s vehicle, Eulalio reached through the SUV window and wrestled with Gladys. The unidentified witness began to run away from the vehicle and heard multiple gunshots.

According to charging documents, a second witness -- dubbed the Good Samaritan by police -- was shot once in the upper body after asking if Gladys Tordil needed help, police say.

Eulalio Tordil fled the scene, but continued his shooting spree the following day in Montgomery County, authorities say.

He has been charged with two counts of murder in shootings May 6 at the Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, which also wounded two people, as well as the death of a woman at Giant Foods in Silver Spring.

Malcom “Mike” Winffel, 45, of Rockville was killed after he intervened as Eulalio Tordil tried to steal a woman’s car outside Macy’s. The woman shouted for help, was shot, and Winffel and another man ran to help. Both men were shot by Tordil, say police, who called the pair heroes.

The second man is recovering from his wounds, as is the woman they helped. Winffel’s funeral was held May 12.

After the mall shooting, police say Eulalio Tordil drove to the Giant store in Silver Spring, where he tried to steal a car. But that victim, Claudina Modina, 65, of Silver Spring, fought back, and was fatally shot.

Officers had tracked Tordil’s car to a nearby parking lot, where they swarmed his vehicle and arrested him a couple hours after the shootings.

Tackling Domestic Violence

Educator Mitchell Dudley said the school system must continue to work with community agencies to craft workshops that teach parents and children what behavior is acceptable, and not, in the home.

“Our children are so exposed to people shooting people. I don’t like what you say, I can jump over the table and punch you. It’s become the Wild West again,” Mitchell Dudley told Patch. “I call it the ‘Jerry Springering of America.’ We’ve got to teach our children better.”

She plans to hold a domestic violence workshop for education association members soon. Even though teachers are required by law in Maryland to report signs of abuse, the subject is a crucial one in the county, Mitchell Dudley said.

“I can’t lose another member to domestic violence, I can’t.”

»Screenshot of homicide victims Neshante Alesha Davis and Chloe Nichole Davis-Green from WUSA; photo of Grace Tordil used with permission of Eric Paviat