Brother Slaying Brother?

This all seems a little strange and sad:

A Trophy Club man has been arrested in the fatal shooting of his brother, a well-known peace activist, who was found dead in a pickup on U.S. 377, a police spokesman said.

The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the dead man as David Honish, 52, of Denton.

He was found at about 11:30 p.m. Thursday by a Flower Mound police officer who had stopped to check on the pickup parked along the highway with its engine running, said Officer Paul Boon, police spokesman.

Investigators “following up on leads’’ arrested Mark Francis Honish, 44, near his home in Trophy Club, Boon said.

I had exchanged a number of emails with David Honish when he was still associated with the effort to get the Tactical Edge shooting center off the ground (at the time in 2003 it was known as “H3 Tactical Edge”).  I also had some emails with his brother Mark regarding their membership plans and my thoughts on them.  And I had also met him and his brother on one occasion at a gun show.  Later, though (in June of last year), there appears to have been a rift between the two concerning the direction the range plans were going.  David sent me an email detailing the differences between the two and what he saw as the errors that Mark was making.

The articles that are out at the moment don’t offer any idea as to motive, but then it’s still early.  I can’t help but wonder if this project had anything to do with it, though.  Money and business can destroy families and relationships if people aren’t careful, and this range project has been troubled from the start.  I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Update:  I suppose it was too much to ask for the media to not spin this in such as way as to insinuate that this was related to the shooting sports in general.  Here’s the take on it from the Dallas Morning News:

A man involved in opening a premier shooting range has been arrested in connection with the death of his brother, a Denton peace activist who was found slumped over the front seat of his truck with a gunshot wound to the head, Flower Mound police said.

Oh… and it appears they did a Google search on Mark and/or David Honish, since they quote an old post of mine (and my site happens to be the first hit you get for Mark Honish):

A firearms expert, Mark Honish was president of Tactical Advantage, which plans to open the nation’s largest indoor shooting range in Roanoke in the fall. The City Council voted in 2003 to approve the construction of the 40,000-square-foot Tactical Edge Performance Shooting Centers.

On the Web site Aubreyturner.org, David Honish wrote in 2003 about the pair’s plan to start the gun range. “Long story short, we need $400K in private investment to qualify for the loans to make this happen,” he wrote. “Will work out the details with my brother & have info on it in the near future for you.”

The comment on the old post is from David in reference to a later post I did regarding the life membership (which also spurred several emails).

Update 2:  It now appears to be some kind of ongoing feud between the two brothers that led to the murder.

A threatening e-mail found with the body of a Denton peace activist revealed a long-standing sibling feud and led to the arrest Friday of the man’s brother, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

The printout of a June 6 e-mail from David John Honish to his brother Mark Francis Honish read, “You don’t roar at me and wag your finger in my face, EVER AGAIN IN THIS LIFETIME [obscenity]! I explained to you in Feb 2006 that I was finished taking [obscenity] from you. I meant it. There will be severe consequences for noncompliance … because of your own stupidity and your ongoing felony possession of firearms,” according to the affidavit.

Investigators stopped Mark Honish on Friday morning as he was pulling out of his driveway, according to the affidavit.

When he was told of his brother’s death, Mark Honish said, “He has been threatening me, but you probably know that by looking at the e-mail in his truck,” the affidavit says.

Blood was found on the running board of Mark Honish’s truck, and its tire treads matched the tracks left at the crime scene, according to the affidavit.

David Honish’s ex-wife told investigators that the brothers did not like each other and had been feuding for some time, the affidavit says.

2 Comments

  1. Mike Sanders says:

    Do you know anything about the status of the gun range facility the brothers were building? Their web site http://www.tacticaledgepsc.com/ is still active.

  2. No, I was wondering the same thing myself.  I haven’t heard anything about it. 

    I guess the main thing will be whether there is someone else involved with the project who can see it to completion.