Lowe’s parking lot slaying preceeded by long paperwork trail

On Sept. 3, 2008, 61-year-old Robert Arthur Parker filed for divorce from his wife of five years based on allegations that 46-year-old Donna Collins Parker “endangers life, limb and health, and renders cohabitation unsafe.”

On August 12, Horry County police arrested 46-year-old Donna Parker and charged her with hitting her husband in the face with a plastic soda bottle in a criminal domestic violence call to the couple’s Little River home.

A county judge set Donna Parker’s bond at $500 on the charge and ordered her and Robert Parker to have no contact until the CDV charge was taken care of in court.

Since the August 12 arrest, Donna Parker filed nearly a dozen police reports with the Horry County Police department, which lay out the troubles in the Parker’s failing marriage and the fear Donna’s friends and family said she spent her final days living in.

In Donna Parker’s written statement to the court, she said the troubles started when she left Robert Parker, which left him with no source of income.

Donna Parker owned and operated a cleaning service registered in Horry County since 2001, according to county records.

The day Donna Parker bonded out of jail, she returned to her home and found that Robert Parker had taken her Chevrolet truck, utility trailer, tools, and $5,000 in checks made out to Donna Parker’s cleaning business, according to court documents filed Sept. 26.

Donna Parker called police to file a report, but county police called the incident a property dispute and Parker never recovered the $5,000 in checks and the business equipment she said her estranged husband stole.

On Sept. 4, Donna Parker called Horry County Police and filed a harassment report against Robert Parker.

In the report to police, Donna Parker said her estranged husband sent her several text messages and continued to follow her while she worked, and that he called her clients asking for them to fire her, according to a police report.

In a separate report filed on Sept. 5, Donna Parker showed police a text message she said Robert Parker sent her that read, “Won’t be long now James,” according to the report.

In a separate report filed on Sept. 5, Donna Parker told police that Robert Parker followed her to the Heather Glenn Pro Shop in Little River and stole her keys to the shop she was cleaning, and damaged a “Club” anti-theft device she kept on the steering wheel of her work truck.

Parker left her work truck and equipment at the golf shop overnight because she had no other key to the truck.

When Donna Parker returned to the pro shop the following morning, she called police to report her truck and equipment stolen, according to a police report filed on Sept. 6.

Police called Robert Parker from the golf shop and he admitted to officers that he had the truck and that he stole his estranged wife’s keys to the golf shop and cut the “Club” off her steering wheel, according to the report.

The officer told the Parkers to settle the truck issue with the family court and finished the report.

In his written statement filed in the divorce, Robert Parker said he called county magistrate, Chris Arakas, the same day and the judge told him to return the truck to Donna Parker by leaving it in a parking lot in Little River for her to pick up on Sept. 7.

Robert Parker left the truck at the parking lot Arakas ordered at around 12:30 p.m., but had not left the parking lot by the time Donna Parker arrived to pick the truck up, according to the incident report.

A few hours later, Horry County Police took another report from Donna Parker after an auto technician found a brake line loosened and leaking brake fluid and the truck’s engine oil completely drained on the truck her estranged husband just returned to her.

On Sept. 21, Donna Parker filed a burglary report with county officers after she said someone broke into her home through a window and stole her cat.

Officers processed the scene, but said they found no suspicious fingerprints, but officers did find a well-defined shoe print in the home.

A county officer went to Robert Parker’s home to match his shoes with the one found at the crime scene, but the officer said Robert Parker was not home and police told Donna Parker to call them back if she had any other evidence her estranged husband was the culprit, according to the police report.

Donna Parker filed a final report with county police on Sept. 23, the day before she and her estranged husband were to attend a court hearing concerning a restraining order between them.

Parker said her estranged husband drove by her home several times that day, and that he texted her several times, but police said none of the texts were threatening and closed the report.

As of this posting, there were no county records on file detailing the outcome of the Sept. 23 hearing, or whether the hearing was held.

Two days later, on Sept. 26, North Myrtle Beach Police said Robert Parker followed his estranged wife to the Lowe’s hardware store, aimed a shotgun at her, then fired a shot that killed her as she sat inside her work truck.

Police said Robert Parker turned the gun on himself, then pulled the trigger.

Medics rushed Donna Parker to a hospital where she later died and flew Robert Parker to a trauma center where he spent 11 days recovering.

Police charged Parker with murder on Oct. 7.

Parker could have a bond hearing on the murder charge sometime in the next several weeks.