Mike on Crime

By THE CANADIAN PRESS

SUNDRIDGE, Ont. – The brother of a man charged with killing Ontario Provincial Police Const. Vu Pham thinks allegations of marital infidelity may have sent Fred Preston over the edge.

Alex Preston says he spoke to his 70-year-old brother last Sunday, the day before Pham was shot and killed near Winthrop, Ont., northwest of London.

Fred Preston was charged Wednesday with first-degree murder in Pham’s death and the attempted murder of another police officer.

His brother told London radio station AM980 he has no idea why Preston would drive to the Winthrop area because he knew his wife was staying at a women’s shelter in North Bay, Ont.

Sources say Preston had been living apart from his wife for about a year and and was living in the basement of a daughter’s house.

Alex Preston says his brother had been in denial about his wife Barbara’s infidelity until she recently admitted to having an affair.

“He talked about her unfaithfulness – she had finally admitted it but he never told me anything about what his plans were,” said Preston.

Published reports have said Preston went to his ex-wife’s home in southern Ontario with a rifle shortly before Pham was mortally wounded.

“He was looking after his daughter’s animals back at the farm – and he was alone that night – that was a bad thing, he got thinking I guess.”

Preston, a retired logger and one-time politician, has been described as an avid hunter, but his brother says he never knew him to “ever have a gun in the truck.”

“I just can’t even comprehend why he would take that gun with him – it’s beyond any reason that I can reason out,” he told AM980.

Preston is in a London hospital in critical condition and his brother says he is in a coma on life support, with a bullet lodged in his brain.

“I don’t think he’ll ever come out of it,” said Preston. “He wasn’t only my brother, he was my best friend, so it’s an awful loss.”

Thousands of police officers, meanwhile, are expected to pay tribute to the slain officer in Wingham on Friday.

A service for Pham is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. ET at the North Huron Wescast Community Complex in Wingham.

Visitation was scheduled for Thursday, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., at McBurney Funeral Home.