Southland Shooting Suspect's Grandson Gives his Side

Tanner Walts wants to remember his grandfather as he’s always known him: adventurous, humorous and well-traveled. For the past couple of years, his grandfather, 84-year-old Louis Marquart, has been fading to an illness, but it wasn’t until recently that Walts realized just how far that illness had gone.

On Sunday evening Marquart was arrested at his residence as the suspect in a domestic dispute turned aggravated assault when he pulled out a gun and shot his wife before turning it back on himself. Now that his grandfather has been identified, Walts said, he wants to make sure the public knows the whole story.

“I do want to stress that my grandpa does have dementia and Alzheimer’s,” he said. “We all knew it, he was diagnosed. I saw somebody comment on one of those stories ‘If this dude broke into my house and tried to shoot two people…’ he didn’t do that. He’s [84], he’s definitely not breaking into houses anymore. I just wanted to forward everything I knew along so that there wasn’t as much confusion and hatred posted on the page. There’s been a lot of that. I’m tired of the hatred and everything. He was troubled but he just—I think he just didn’t want to go out by himself, honestly.”

According to Walts, Marquart had often spoken of how he would “rob a store” or some such should he ever get to the point where he could no longer care for himself so that he’d be taken to jail and not put into some other type of facility.

He said that on the basis of these frequent jokes and what he gleaned from a short visit with his grandmother in the hospital, he doesn’t believe that the shooting was an accident.

“She (his grandmother) is now able to speak,” Walts said. “She is doing much better. I believe she is still in critical condition, but my dad and most of my family are up there now.”

Walts and the majority of his family live in Dallas, he said, and as soon as they found out about the incident, they drove down to San Angelo. They don’t see each other as often as they’d like, Walts said, but he did describe his family as close-knit.

“This is really hard,” he said. “When this happens to anybody, your first thought is, ‘Oh, what if I missed my last chance to tell them I love them?’ My birthday was a month ago today and I still haven’t—I spoke with them, but I didn’t get to go see them or anything. It’s just one of those things. That could have been my last opportunity to see my grandma, but it actually wasn’t and I’m so thankful for that.”

Walts said his grandfather was diagnosed with dementia roughly two years ago, but that things haven’t been right for quite some time.  “He’s never been all there, really,” he said sadly.

Before he was diagnosed, Marquart was active and adventurous, Walts said, and he believes that the restrictions his illness has put on his life contributed to the attempted murder-suicide Sunday.

“[Before he had dementia] he was always goofing around with us, would go on trips with my grandma all the time,” Walts said. “I mean, they’d go to Colorado in their RV all the time and just go for a week. I went with them to Marfa, Texas a couple of times. That was fun. [He was] always adventurous, loved hunting, all that fun stuff, just your typical country guy. Since he got dementia, he’s had to stop doing all that and I think that took a toll on him, too, because he can’t just go out and do stuff anymore.”

Walts has not had a chance to have a real conversation with his grandmother since she was hospitalized on Sunday, but says she is doing better and can talk again. He believes she’s still in critical condition, but hopes that she’ll make a full and speedy recovery.

Although he does not agree with the way in which his grandfather is being depicted by commentors online, Walts said he does hope Marquart is brought to justice. Honestly, I think that he needs treatment of some sort,” Walts said. “He wasn’t getting it outside of jail, hopefully he’ll get it in jail. I know he’s not going to be welcome at that house. It won’t happen. I honestly hope he sits in jail. He shot my grandma. I really don’t want him out where he can try it again.”

As he and his family work through this difficult period, Walts asks only one thing: “Keep us in your prayers and thoughts,” he said before hanging up the telephone Monday.