Texas Woman Killed by Estranged Husband at Football Party Asked in Final Moments, 'Did You Really Have to Do This?'
Moments before she was fatally shot by her estranged husband, Meredith Hight asked the man she was divorcing a question.
“Did you really have to do this?,” asked Meredith, according to newly-released court documents obtained by PEOPLE. Then her husband, Spencer Hight, who had crashed Meredith’s Sept. 10 football viewing party, murdered her and seven of her friends before being fatally shot by police.
A witness who was in the backyard of Meredith’s Plano, Texas, home at the time of the mass shooting told investigators her question was almost immediately followed by the sound of gunfire. Not long after, Spencer Hight was taken down by a policeman’s bullet.
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Police say Spencer fatally shot Anthony Michael Cross, 33, Olivia Nicole Deffner, 24, James Richard Dunlop, 29, Darryl William Hawkins, 22, Rion Christopher Morgan, 31, Myah Sade Bass, 28, and Caleb Seth Edwards, 25.
Another woman was hospitalized after being struck in the jaw with a bullet. She is still recovering from the attack.
Documents reveal that a witness who was at the party was in the backyard when she saw Spencer inside with a rifle and heard gunshots.
The witness told police she saw the officer fatally shoot Spencer, who was found with “a rifle attached to his body by a rifle sling,” and a handgun in his waistband, according to search warrants provided to PEOPLE.
He was also carrying several knives.
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A search of Spencer’s apartment turned up “open gun cases and open boxes of ammunition inside the home in plain view.”
According to the documents, police were alerted to the shooting by employees of a nearby bar, who told detectives Spencer was in the bar just prior to the shooting and was seen carrying a knife and a magazine loaded with bullets.
The suspicious employees allegedly followed him to his estranged wife’s home and called 911.
Meredith’s friend, and hairdresser, Adriana Vega, told PEOPLE that Meredith said she was leaving Spencer because of his excessive drinking.
“She [told] me that Spencer had an alcohol problem and she wanted him to go to rehab but she couldn’t get him to,” Vega said. “She told me that a doctor said if he would not stop drinking in a year he would die.”
Meredith’s mother, Debbie Lane, previously told local station WFAA that Spencer was upset that Meredith was thriving after the separation.
“I think he saw our comfort, ease, and happiness … and her [Meredith] embracing new life, and resented it to the maximum and responded the way he did,” Debbie told the station. “He was not moving on,” she said. “And she was.”
A Plano Police Department spokesman tells PEOPLE the case is still being investigated.
The spokesman refused to comment on a motive for the bloodshed.
