February 2012    Download the Entire Issue (PDF)

Vol. 27, No. 2   What's this?

Did This Divemaster Commit Suicide, or Was She Silenced?

from the February, 2012 issue of Undercurrent  

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A divemaster who was found shot to death last month in her Spokane, WA home had been named in a second million-dollar diving negligence lawsuit two weeks before her death.

Kim Schmidt, 34, and the scuba company where she gave lessons were allegedly responsible for two diving accidents that left their students with brain damage. Police detectives are wondering if the thought of defending her second dive-related lawsuit prompted Schmidt to commit suicide, or if her death was a way of silencing the testimony she would offer at trial. Schmidt was discovered inside her home by her mother. A pistol was found nearby, and investigators were thinking suicide, until they noted that Schmidt's body appeared to have been moved after she was shot....