A 76-year-old Georgia woman surrendered to authorities minutes after allegedly gunning down her ex-husband and his girlfriend inside their trailer home.
Grace Edge, 76, was arrested Monday afternoon and charged with two counts of malice murder, two counts of murder, and three counts of aggravated assault in the double slaying at a residence on McNatt Falls Road in Uvalda, Ga., Toombs County Sheriff Jordan Kight said. Her ex-husband, Wallace Truman Edge, 75, and his girlfriend Pamela Cook, 40, were pronounced dead at the scene after suffering a combined four gunshot wounds from five rounds fired.
Diane Cook, 55, Pamela’s mother, was visiting the home when the violence erupted. She managed to call 911 before being wounded in the arm herself. “She just come in start shooting,” Diane Cook told the dispatcher in the emergency call. The frantic mother insisted there had been no confrontation preceding the gunfire: “No, she come in just shooting.”
The Edges had been divorced for more than ten years, yet maintained an on-again, off-again connection until Wallace Edge began his relationship with the much younger Cook. That development appears to have triggered Grace Edge’s deadly response. “Mr. Edge had started dating Pamela, and it appears that based on information we received that Grace was not accepting of the situation,” Kight told WTOC.
The sheriff said Grace Edge drove directly from the crime scene to the sheriff’s office, where she was taken into custody without incident. “We believe she had drove straight from the residence where this happened and drove straight here to the sheriff’s office,” Kight said.
The couple’s history was marked by repeated law enforcement involvement. Kight revealed that Wallace and Grace Edge had called police on each other dozens of times over the years, alleging domestic disputes and various incidents against one another at their shared home. Despite the volume of complaints, no arrests had ever resulted from those prior calls.
The shooting unfolded in the small community of Uvalda, located in Toombs County in southeast Georgia, where the low-slung residence on McNatt Falls Road became the scene of a brutal intrusion. Grace Edge allegedly barged through the door and opened fire, leaving two dead and one injured in a matter of moments.
Pamela Cook, 40, had been in a relationship with Wallace Edge that drew fatal opposition from his former wife. Her mother Diane survived the attack with an arm wound and provided authorities with an immediate account of the unprovoked assault.
Grace Edge remained held at the Toombs County Detention Center as of the latest reports, awaiting her first court appearance on the seven charges stemming from the double slaying.
