Wife won't be charged in fatal Transylvania shooting
LAKE TOXAWAY — A woman who fatally shot her husband during a violent domestic dispute will not face charges, the district attorney said.
Thomas Coke Bayne, 45, was found dead around 3 a.m. Sept. 25 at their home on Chapman Ridge Road. His wife, Tina Bayne, acted in the face of a "very serious and legitimate threat on her life" when she shot him, said Greg Newman, the Henderson County district attorney.
"We feel like her actions are justified," Newman said Wednesday. "It's horribly tragic all around."
Transylvania County investigators and the State Bureau of Investigation reviewed the case.
Tina Bayne had been victimized by her husband for years, Newman said, and in the past few years, his behavior had become increasingly volatile and the mental and physical abuse increased. At the time of the shooting, Tina Bayne had decided she would separate from him, but he was not letting her get away, even preventing her from attending a family funeral and catching her when she jumped out a window in an attempt to get to a neighbor's house, during which she injured her foot, Newman said.
"Over the course of the night, he had been very intimidating to her," Newman said. At least twice, he held a gun to her head.
In the immediate moments before the fatal shooting, Thomas Bayne "moved aggressively toward her" and said he was going to kill her, Newman said. "She was very fearful at that point that he was indeed going to follow through," Newman said.
Tina Bayne shot him four times. Their daughter was in the home at the time.
"I'm very satisfied this is the right decision," Newman said.
In a 911 call about the shooting, a distraught woman tells a dispatcher her dad has just shot himself and is bleeding on the floor in their home. She says her mother is not there.
In a second 911 call, a neighbor tells a dispatcher Tina Bayne came down to his house and told him she "had to shoot her husband."
The dispatcher clarifies, "So he didn't commit suicide?"
"No, no I don't think so," the neighbor says. "She's kind of, you know, all to pieces."
The neighbor also tells the dispatcher Bayne's daughter is still in the house.
"She was just trying to get away," he says of Tina Bayne.
The neighbor says he thinks Thomas Bayne "was being real violent with her."