Wife charged after van runs over husband

PALMER -- Horrified, neighbors watched a 50-year-old man scream for mercy as his wife allegedly used her minivan to run him over five times in the parking lot of their apartment building, police and witnesses said yesterday.

Starleen A. Rutkowski, 46, was arrested at the scene late Tuesday and arraigned yesterday in Palmer District Court on one count of murder in the death of her husband, Richard J. Rutkowski, whom police found severely injured outside the Country Manor apartment complex in the town's Three Rivers section. Medical officials later pronounced him dead at the nearby Wing Memorial Hospital.

''The preliminary investigation indicates that Mrs. Rutkowski intentionally struck Mr. Rutkowski with their white 1999 Dodge Caravan during a domestic dispute," police said in a statement.

During questioning, Starleen Rutkowski told police her husband had wandered off while the two were fishing on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported. Angry, she apparently returned home and tossed his possessions on the lawn of the apartment complex. Later, when he returned, he reportedly started laughing at her, and at about 8 p.m. she allegedly ran him over in the parking lot behind the complex's A building, neighbors and officials said.

Rutkowski, who pleaded not guilty, was ordered held without bail yesterday at the Hampden County House of Correction in Ludlow. A pretrial conference was scheduled on Sept. 16. Her lawyer did not return calls last night.

''I just heard a car screech, and then I heard a man screaming, 'No! No!' " said Cederia Richer, 30, a neighbor in the apartment complex. ''It got to the point where it sounded like a really scary scream."

At the apartment complex yesterday, another neighbor, Marilyn Dinsmore, said she heard tires squealing in the parking lot Tuesday night. She went to her window and saw ''a woman in a minivan smashing into my van," she said. ''I waited a second and saw she had been running over a man."

When Rutkowski stepped out of the minivan, she began yelling at one of their neighbors, Dinsmore said.

Officials at the apartment complex declined to comment last night.

The couple apparently moved to Palmer from Salt Lake City about a year ago. When they moved to town, they spent about two months living in an efficiency apartment at Wedgewood Motel, a manager there said. ''There was never a problem with them here," said the manager, who asked that her name not be published.

A clerk at Palmer District Court said neither of the Rutkowskis had a criminal record or had taken out a restraining order.

It wasn't clear last night what brought the couple to Palmer or what either did for a living. One former neighbor said that neither worked and that Rutkowski's husband used to pick cans from Dumpsters.

The neighbor, James Miller, did not get along with Rutkowski's husband. ''He knew everything, no matter what you said," Miller said.

Another resident of the apartment complex said Starleen Rutkowski often paced around the hallways of their building. Teresa Hurley, the neighbor, described Rutkowski's husband as a ''nice man" who always greeted her.

Lisa Belanger, who works at a nearby store, said she often talked about fishing with Richard Rutkowski when he came in to buy the local newspaper. ''Richard was very soft-spoken," she said. ''He loved fishing, and he would talk to me about wildlife and how important it was not to litter."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.