Georgia man accused of killing his wife’s divorce attorney and setting fire to office | Georgia

A Georgia divorce attorney was recently shot dead by a client’s estranged husband – and his office was set on fire – in an extreme example of how contentious US family court cases can become, authorities say.

Police in the Lawrenceville community allege that Allen Tayeh went into the office of an attorney representing a woman in divorce proceedings on December 7 and shot and killed attorney Doug Lewis.

Tayeh is accused of then pouring gasoline all over Lewis’ office and setting the building on fire before firefighters arrived to put out the fire and discovered the body of the killed man, local news agency KENS reported, citing police .

A witness outside the law firm led investigators during the fire to Tayeh, who was nearby, had been burned and was carrying a revolver with spent cartridges in his cylinder, police told KENS. He was also in an area where gas cans were parked and which smelled of gasoline, officials said.

Investigators booked Tayeh for wanton murder and arson. The woman, who is divorcing him and Lawrence, was scheduled to meet Tayeh for a court hearing in the coming days, police added.

“It’s pretty cheeky,” a Lawrenceville police lieutenant, Jake Parker, told KENS of Tayeh’s alleged actions. “It’s kind of out of the blue.”

The murder of Lewis and the destruction of his office stunned the legal community in Lawrenceville, a city of 30,000 just 30 miles from Atlanta.

“Doug was a consummate gentleman,” Lewis’s fellow attorney Phil McCurdy told KENS the day after the murder. “I never heard him raise his voice, I never saw him lose his temper. I never saw him treat anyone except with respect.

“I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t have appreciated him as a colleague, as a professional and as a person.”

A former legal partner of Lewis, Jesse Kent, remembered him as a considerate husband to his wife and a loving father to his children.

“He was the standard that all lawyers – including me – aspired to,” Kent wrote in an email to the local broadcaster. “The legal profession will never be the same without him.”

According to the American Bar Association Journal, it’s rare for attorneys to be physically assaulted because of their work. But, the ABA Journal added, a series of surveys in 2018 aimed at measuring violence against lawyers showed that family lawyers were more likely to have been threatened and more likely to have been attacked than lawyers in general, particularly in the past year by someone who had already threatened her.

That’s likely because family law cases, which often involve divorce and related custody issues, evoke particularly strong emotions among those involved, said an attorney interviewed by the magazine.