Lowe's shooting victim's family describes her final days

North Myrtle Beach Police responded to a shooting call in the North Myrtle Beach Lowe’s parking lot on Sept. 26 and found a woman shot to death inside a pickup truck and her estranged husband bleeding from a shotgun wound to his stomach.

Police said the man, 62-year-old Robert Arthur Parker, shot his wife, 46-year-old Donna Collins Parker, to death as she sat in her pickup truck, then shot himself in the stomach.

Robert survived and sits inside a jail cell at the J. Reuben Long Detention Center, charged with murder.

The Parkers were involved in a divorce, a divorce Robert filed for on Sept. 3 after a series of police reports and documented troubles between the couple.

In 10 reports Donna filed with the Horry County Police Department beginning on August 13 until her muder, 4 were for claims of harassment, 2 concerned larcenies, 2 malicious damage reports, a stolen vehicle, a burglary, and a property dispute; all naming Robert Parker as the suspect.

Donna Parker’s family said she lived her final days fearing for her life, “Everyday she would call me. She’d call me three time a day and one day she finally said, I know you’re wondering why I’m calling you so much, she said but I’m scared something’s going to happen to me and I want to make sure that I talk to you before something happens,” Donna’s daughter Danielle Dowless told News13.

In 2001, two years before the Parkers married, Donna started Top to Bottom Cleaning Service, a commercial cleaning business based in Horry County.

The business had dozens of clients and was turning into a successful venture, according to Parker’s family.

“She was proud real proud of her business, she was proud of what she did,” Donna’s sister, Linda Britt said.

“She was trying to stay away from him and she was doing all she could, but he wouldn’t stay away from her. I feel like she knew something was going to happen eventually, and it did,” Britt said.

Donna spent seven days a week running her business and was haunted everyday and continuously followed by her estranged husband, according to Parker’s family.

Dowless said her mother wanted to retire and turn her business over to her daughters, then retire to her second home in the North Carolina mountains.

On August 12, Horry County Police arrested Donna and charged her with criminal domestic violence after police said she poured a drink on Robert and hit him with a plastic bottle.

A judge issued the Parkers a no-contact order at a hearing on August 13 and allowed Donna to return to her home to pick up clothes with a county police escort.

When Donna returned to her home, she noticed several pieces of equipment that belonged to her cleaning business were missing and she filed a report with county police.

That started a list of other complains against her estranged husband, complains that Donna’s family said county police didn’t take seriously, “I think they really didn't do their job like they should have. I think there could have been more done. I think they didn't take it seriously and it ended up like it did,” Dowless said.

“She felt lost. I mean, all of her family was here in North Carolina, so she had to rely on the police department and when she needed them the most, they really weren’t there for her,” Dowless said.

On Oct. 7, North Myrtle Beach police arrested Robert Parker before he was released from a North Carolina trauma center after medics saved his life after police said he shot himself with the same shotgun he killed Donna Parker with.

Robert Parker remains jailed awaiting a bond hearing on his murder charge.

Donna Parker leaves behind two daughters, her mother and father, a sister, and a brother.