YAKIMA, Wa – A local woman stands accused of killing a doctor with an apple Thursday morning. Lorena Baldwin, 29, reportedly shot her ex-physician with an apple fired from a potato gun. The impact was great enough that Dr. Greg Abode, 42, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Baldwin was arrested shortly after the incident occurred, as witnesses say she dropped the spud gun after firing on Dr. Abode, then entered her car and immediately crashed into a parked ambulance, delaying her escape. Authorities arrived on the scene and detained her.
Baldwin says she was repeatedly harassed by Abode for the past three months after ending his tenure as her personal physician. “He was hitting on me a lot whenever I would go see him, and I was always like, ‘Don’t you have a wife?’ When he didn’t stop I switched physicians, then things got creepy,” commented Baldwin at the Yakima County Jail.
According to Baldwin, once she started seeing another physician, Abode started stalking her and leaving her phone messages that varied from quasi-sadistic love poems to vague threats of violence. “He once left me a message in French that I later learned was Napoleon’s first love letter to Josephine. Tell me that I shouldn’t have been concerned,” Baldwin said.
According to Baldwin’s family, she had gone to Yakima County police but they refused to take action on the case. Many local resident’s suspect that is because Abode’s brother owns the Yakima County Ski Resort and gives free passes out to the police officers, and even lets them host their annual policeman’s ball at the ski lodge. “Yep, Big Ski’s been trying to run this town for awhile,” said a local resident who asked not to be identified for safety reasons. “They’ve been battling Big Apple for years now.”
Baldwin then began eating apples for every meal of the day in an attempt to keep Abode away from her. “I had heard that an apple a day will keep the doctor away, and I thought it might be my only hope,” said Baldwin. “For about three weeks, my diet consisted only of apples or apple related foods, and it made me very ill, which ironically caused me to go to the doctor’s office frequently. What bullshit.”
Baldwin stated that she then rethought what the phrase meant. “I rethinked [sic], uh, rethunk [sic] about… no… Rethanked [sic] about it, and, uh… That’s not the word I’m looking for. Shit. Well, uh, I thought it over, and I said to myself, ‘maybe I have to physically do something with the apple instead’. Rethought! That’s it; that’s the word – the one I was looking for earlier.”
Baldwin then borrowed her 11 year old nephew’s potato gun, which he had constructed as a project for a science fair. The boy has been arrested for being an accomplice to murder. Baldwin stated she did not intend to kill Abode with the apple, but that’s what happened anyway.
Yakima residents were shocked by the news, the first apple-related death in the county since 2001, when an apple silo cracked open and an avalanche of apples pummeled Felix Burroughs. Burroughs died the next day in the Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital from internal bleeding caused by severe bruising. Many of the apples survived, however, and were acquitted of all charges, going on to make numerous pies.
Potvin Newsly 