Murder victim fled to Florida

Flo Tyson left Tyrone home before husband killed her at F’ville dentist office

By JOHN MUNFORD
jmunford@TheCitizenNews.com

Several weeks before she was shot to death by her husband at a Fayetteville dentist’s office Tuesday, Flossie Cooper Tyson had fled the state of Georgia to get away from her husband, according to Bonnie Campbell, executive director of the Fayette County Council on Domestic Violence.

Mrs. Tyson, known as “Flo” to her friends, had gone to live in Jacksonville, Fla., with family, Campbell said. She had been living there for several weeks and only come back to Fayetteville to keep a dentist appointment and perhaps to handle matters related to the couple’s divorce, Campbell added.

In February, Campbell assisted Flo in filing for a protective order against her 65-year-old husband Sammy L. Tyson after he was arrested for assaulting her in the couple’s Castlewood Road home.

“She was ready to escape the abuse she had lived with for quite some time,” Campbell said. “She was very excited about her new life and that’s why it was so devastating to us.”

A large number of domestic violence homicides occur while the victim is in the process of trying to leave her abuser, Campbell said.

“That’s why we cringe when people say, ‘Why doesn’t she just leave?’” Campbell said. “... Instead we have to ask, ‘Why does he doe that and what can we do to stop it?’”

Flo Tyson, 54, was a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines and after the Feb. 10 assault at the couple’s home she received a family violence protective order signed by Fayette Magistrate James A. White. According to the order, Sammy Tyson was supposed to stay up to 200 yards away from his wife, move out of the couple’s home and refrain from threatening or harming her in any way.

Police say Sammy Tyson violated that order Tuesday when he entered Family Dental Care at 270 Ga. Highway 314 north and shot Flo Tyson several times. He then shot himself, according to police accounts, and both had died within two hours of the killing.

On the petition for the family violence protective order, Flo Tyson said she had become afraid of her husband.

“He has an explosive personality and has, at times, grabbed my clothes and ripped them, hit me, (and) spit in my face,” she said on the petition.

As recently as April 7, there were indications that the couple had reached agreements on the temporary terms of their divorce after a mediation hearing, according to court papers. Mrs. Tyson filed the divorce suit in Fayette County Superior Court on grounds of the marriage being “irretrievably broken, adultery and cruel treatment.”

Mr. Tyson originally filed a counterclaim to the petition for a temporary family violence protective order, alleging that his wife started the altercation Feb. 10 and that she struck him several times with the telephone.

Flo Tyson said in court papers that argument began when he told her he “wasn’t going to file our taxes jointly.”

“When I was looking at papers he went into a rage and slapped me,” Mrs. Tyson said in the petition. She also added, “This is the third time he has been arrested for hitting me and I am afraid of him when he goes into these explosive rages.”

Sammy Tyson alleged in court filings that his wife has assaulted him several times, once shooting at him —Êthe bullet struck a wall instead — in 1991.

The couple married in 1989 in Fayetteville but they had no children together.

Sammy Tyson had been arrested in 1998 for kicking his wife in the stomach, she said in court papers. This was his third arrest for domestic violence, Campbell noted.

Campbell said it is important for people in the community to realize that domestic violence takes place behind closed doors and that abusers often have a good public persona which helps them gain credibility with friends and acquaintances who “just can’t believe” he would hit his wife.

“They think, ‘He wouldn’t do anything like that because he’s always been nice to me,’” Campbell said.

Flo Tyson left an impression on Campbell and the staff at the Fayette County Council on Domestic Violence. Campbell said Flo was a very nice person.

“She was the kind of person who the first time that you talk to her you feel like you’ve known her all your life,” Campbell said. She added that Flo Tyson’s family members told her she touched a number of lives.

“It’s been a huge blow to us,” Campbell said. “She just touched our hearts.”

Although no domestic violence deaths were reported in Fayette County last year, two former Fayette residents dies in such incidents while living elsewhere, Campbell said. Both of those victims were in their 20s, with one having graduated from Starr’s Mill High School and the other from Fayette County High School.