Demetrius T’Juan Butler knew this grim story had no happy ending.
As a paramedic, he worked for years with different teams of dispatchers, police officers and firefighters all trying to defuse volatile and dangerous situations like the one he set off.
It started about 2 a.m. Thursday in Akron when Butler shot and killed his fiancee, Olivia “Liv” Hamey, 35, in the basement of her Goodyear Heights home as her children, an 11-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son, tried to sleep upstairs.
It ended not long after, about 5 miles away, in the driveway of his mother’s East Akron home.
There, Butler — a 35-year-old Twinsburg firefighter who was once named co-paramedic of the year when he worked for a different department in Stark County — shot himself in the chest.
In between the murder and the suicide, Butler left a trail of heartbreak, destruction and questions, many of which may never be answered.