Portage High School community mourn loss of beloved secretary killed in apparent murder-suicide
PORTAGE, Ind. (CBS) —The Portage High School community is mourning the loss of Brandy Manville, a beloved school secretary killed in an apparent murder-suicide over the weekend.
Mrs. Manville, as she was known by the students, was a secretary at the school for about a decade. As the community remembers her, counseling services are in progress.
"Like, is this real? Nobody would ever think such a nice, caring lady. Something like this would ever happen," sophomore Greg Campbell said.
Students at Portage High School will always remember her as the smiling face behind her desk, with some describing her as "a second mom."
"Many of us thought of her as our school guardian angel, and it's going to be hard these next couple of weeks, and even moving on, just not her sitting in her normal spot," Campbell said.
They're still coming to terms with the fact that police were called to her home Friday night for a 911 call regarding a "domestic incident."
The caller said her father was drunk and throwing things inside the home, then told dispatchers he was armed with a gun. Operators could hear the man saying everyone in the home was going to die and then the sound of gunfire.
Officers forced their way inside the home and found 46-year-old Manville dead of apparent gunshot wounds. Her husband, 45-year-old Charles Manville, was also dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Manville's 21-year-old daughter also had been shot three times but survived.
According to court records, Brandy Manville filed for divorce in July and sought a restraining order against Charles Manville. Records also show three different drunk driving charges filed against Charles in August.
Brandy Manville's friend Olivia Chelich said she is part of a vast support network for Brandy's surviving daughter, who is still hospitalized.
"She's in critical but stable condition. I've been with her every day that she's, you know, been hospitalized," she said.
Manville also has a teenage son who was not home at the time of the shooting.
"She was a fantastic mom to her children, and you know," Chelich said. "I don't know how we're going to move forward, but we are. The kids are going to be number one priority with a lot of our close family. So they are going to be very well taken care of. But she's just. She was a lover of all things. She really was. She found the humor in any situation."
A school spokesperson called Mrs. Manville "a dynamic individual who had a profound impact on our students and staff. She was also a mentor to countless students, and she will be greatly missed."
