Baylee Gonzales embraces the daughter of Carissa Larkin Thursday morning as first responders work at the scene of an apparent murder-suicide in central Vancouver that left Larkin dead. (Amanda Cowan/The Columbian files)
A GoFundMe identifies her as Carissa Larkin, 32, of Vancouver. The fundraiser, which had garnered nearly $8,000 as of Tuesday afternoon, aims to raise money for Larkin’s funeral service and the care of her three children.
“At this time, we are asking for money to help with funeral arrangements and funds to support her children as they transition through the hardest thing in their lives,” Baylee Gonzales wrote on the fundraising web page.
Larkin was killed in a shooting Thursday morning in the parking lot of an apartment complex in the 4300 block of Plomondon Street. Shortly after 8 a.m., a caller reported seeing a man in the parking lot with a gun and then hearing gunshots, Vancouver police said in a news release.
When officers arrived, they found two people dead, including the suspected shooter, the news release stated. The Clark County Medical Examiner’s Office has not yet released their identities and causes and manners of death.
Gonzales said the shooter was Larkin’s former fiancé, whom she identified as Kyle Palmer. She said they were separated and hadn’t had contact for months before Palmer ambushed Larkin in her apartment’s parking lot.
Court records show Larkin was granted a protection order against Palmer earlier this year in Clark County Superior Court. Larkin sought to prohibit Palmer from having contact with her three children while a police investigation was pending into reports of abuse.
Larkin wrote in her petition for the protection order that she feared Palmer would retaliate if he was served. She also wrote she knew him to have firearms but did not say he’d previously threatened her with a weapon. Gonzales declined to comment Thursday on any allegations in the couple’s past.
Court records show Palmer was served with a temporary protection order in April, and he did not attend a hearing when a court commissioner granted Larkin a three-year protection order.
Larkin was carrying her 4-year-old son to her car at the time of the shooting, Gonzales said, and the boy was struck by gunfire. He was taken to a Vancouver hospital, followed by a children’s hospital in Portland. Gonzales said he needed stitches in his hand.
Gonzales met Larkin three years ago through a Facebook group Larkin made for Vancouver mothers, she said. They quickly became best friends — or soul sisters, as Gonzales said they called each other.
She said she was shocked when police explained to her what happened.
“Then, when I asked the officer what’s going on, I broke down, because my first thought was, ‘These babies don’t have a mommy anymore,’ ” Gonzales said. “They don’t have a mommy anymore, and that’s all they wanted. She was just such a good mom to them.”
Gonzales said she is now caring for the children.
Although a date hasn’t yet been set, Gonzales said loved ones intend to hold a service for “the tribe that Carissa has built here in Vancouver.” That community includes the more than 100 women who have met through Larkin’s Facebook group, she said.
Gonzales described her friend as the life of the party who would do anything to help her friends when they needed it. She said she and Larkin’s children have been watching videos of their mother, particularly to hear her big, contagious laugh.
“I just want the focus to be on the amazing woman she was and not the psychopath he may have been,” Gonzales said. “She was just the light of everybody’s life.”
