Shooting death came at the end of stormy period, mother says.

Byline: REBECCA NOLAN The Register-Guard

Alcoholism, financial problems and the lasting effects of a bitter divorce marked the last three years of Guy Einer McClure's life.

A man who once owned his own logging truck, a home with a pool and hot tub, and a three-wheeler for weekend fun found himself living with his unemployed girlfriend in a $10,000 trailer his mother bought him.

Even the late-model Chevy pickup truck parked in his driveway had been paid for with Mom's cash.

"He couldn't make a living," his mother, Kathy McClure, said Wednesday. "He got more and more depressed."

McClure, 35, was shot dead Saturday after an eight-hour standoff with police at Creswell Court, 700 N. Mill St. in Creswell. Neither negotiators nor tear gas could persuade him to surrender peacefully to police.

Instead, he stepped outside holding a .44-caliber handgun, refused to drop it, and died in a hail of police bullets when nine Metro Area SWAT officers fired their weapons.

Since his June 1999 divorce in Prineville, McClure had been engaged in a downward spiral, his mother said.

His wife had a restraining order against him and won custody of their only child, a son born in 1990. Although the divorce bankrupted him, the judge ordered him to pay more than $1,000 a month in child and spousal support, his mother said. It was more than he could afford hauling merchandise around the country for Wal-Mart, she said.

When he lost that job after a year, he became despondent. He was a beaten man, his mother said. Always a drinker, he took to the bottle with renewed ferocity, she said. His ex-wife had remarried and moved to Culver, and the restraining order prevented him from calling to talk with his son.

"He lost everything," his mother said. "He hasn't spoken to his son in 2 1/2 years."

In Prineville, he began dating a childhood friend, a woman too ill with pancreatic disease to work. The couple moved to the Creswell trailer park about four months ago and McClure started working as a log hauler, struggling to keep them afloat.

Last Friday, McClure and his girlfriend spent much of the day drinking, neighbors said. They fought, and McClure was shot in the face with a .44-caliber Magnum.

Neighbors helped the girlfriend escape and she later left town. Police have said the woman may face criminal charges when she returns.

Delirious with drink and blood loss, McClure called his mother at her Eugene home and left three messages on her answering machine. "Mom, (the girlfriend) shot me with the .44," he said in faint, pained voice. "I'm sorry for all the bad things I've done.

"Thank you for everything," he said. "I'll never be able to pay you back. I love you, Mom."

Kathy McClure eventually spoke to her son and urged him to get into a waiting ambulance. She then spent the next nine hours waiting for her son's arrival at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Eugene.

She spoke with emergency dispatchers and offered to call her son or drive to his trailer and talk to him, she said, but her offers were denied.

The nurses at Sacred Heart fixed up a room for her and a friend, called dispatchers on their behalf and bought the women breakfast.

At 7:30 a.m. Saturday, more than three hours after her son died in his driveway, a deputy came to the hospital to tell her of his death. She was not surprised to learn that McClure had refused to leave the trailer, she said. She just wished police hadn't had to kill him.

Now all Kathy McClure has left of her son is the green Chevy pickup with four fresh bullet holes in the tailgate, a collection of photographs and a trio of phone messages left by a man who knew he was about to die. "It's just absolutely rotten," she said. "I blame the legal system. We need to get something going to help these guys."