CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Charleston police have identified an Oregon man who was shot and killed by a woman he attacked Saturday.
It happened in the woman’s 6th Street apartment building where police believe Neal Falls, 45, of Springfield, Oreg., pulled a 9 mm handgun at the woman’s chest and announced he was going to kill her.
In an act of self-defense, the woman grabbed the man’s gun he dropped, in an attempt to get a better grip of strangling her neck, and shot him from behind.
“I grabbed it and I shot him… I can’t believe I shot him,” the woman cried out on the 911 call.
The investigation made national news Wednesday. Chief of Detectives Lt. Steve Cooper spoke to Fox News about the items they recovered from Falls’ vehicle including numerous sets of handcuffs, bottles of bleach, several axes, a shovel, knives, firearms, a bullet proof vest and a pair of boots.
“We believe that it is likely that he has been involved in similar crimes,” Cooper told Fox.
With Oregon license plates and a trunk full of weapons recovered in West Virginia, there are a lot of assumptions being made that Falls may have attacked or killed other women in other states before.
The woman told the Charleston Gazette-Mail she could tell Falls was confident in what he was doing. The woman said he gave her the option of rape or murder, then told her, either way, he would be going to prison for a long time. She told the 911 dispatcher Falls said “live or die” when she opened the door.
“It’s just unlikely that this type of crime being committed by a 45-year-old man is his first rodeo,” Cooper told MetroNews. “Some things lead us to believe he was a pretty organized individual with the belongings that we found.”
City police want to spread this information across the United States, so law enforcement agencies can see it.
“Hopefully we’ll be able to help other agencies solve maybe some unsolved crimes,” he said.
The two originally met on the website Backpage.com.