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September 1, 2010

Wounded mom will ‘never walk right again’

Reunited with children now

Mark Millican markmillican@daltoncitizen.com

DALTON — A Dawnville woman whose home was the scene of three shooting deaths last week has been told by doctors she “won’t be able to walk the same again” as a result of her injuries, her uncle said Wednesday.

Michael Manz is the uncle of Mindy Bullard and brother of Edward Manz III of Chattanooga who was killed during the birthday party at 1571 Rainbow Circle on Aug. 26. He spoke on the day after his brother’s funeral in East Brainerd, Tenn.

Also killed during the shooting were David Dwight Hartline, 41, Bullard’s ex-boyfriend from Summerville who brought a gun into the home and began shooting the adults. Bullard’s ex-husband, Kenneth Simonson, 41, of Cleveland, who had brought two of his and Bullard’s children to the party, died later that night at Hamilton Medical Center.

Bullard was able to go to her father’s funeral on Tuesday in a wheelchair, Manz said.

“She was in a lot of pain, but she was able to go,” he said. “(The doctors) said she’d never walk right again, but that she would be able to walk. She had two broken ankles, her heel was shattered and she had a broken arm.”

Bullard was pursued through the home by Hartline, who shot her at least twice in the legs as she was breaking out an upstairs window. She then leaped over 15 feet onto a concrete driveway. Investigators believe Hartline went back downstairs and was headed outside to shoot Bullard again when Edward Manz III, who was mortally wounded, fired two more shots from his own handgun into Hartline before he could reach his daughter.

“The swelling on her feet is real bad and she doesn’t have any insurance, and they’ve said they wouldn’t treat her anymore,” Manz said. “A trust fund has been set up for the kids.”

Manz was unclear on late Wednesday afternoon about where the trust fund had been set up, but he did say Bullard was reunited with her children, seven of whom were at the party. An older daughter was not at the home during the shootings.

“Yes, she’s with her children, and she’s staying with a family member,” Manz said of Bullard. “But she’ll never be able to go back to that house. That was her dream house, her daddy bought it for her.”

He said he had talked to his niece at the funeral and the weight of what had happened was “really, really hard on her.”

“I’m gonna try to go out of town (today) and get away from everything and recoup a little bit,” he said.

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