ChristianNews
Aspiring Pastor, Matthew Phelps made his first court appearance on Tuesday after being arrested for the death of his wife, Lauren Phelps a Sunday School teacher. Phelps listened quietly as a judge told him he could spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole or face the death penalty if convicted, according to reports.
“It’s a very tragic situation — sad and tragic. And at the same time we have to ask everybody to withhold judgment in this particular case until we know more and we’re able to develop more,” Cheshire said, according to local TV station WRAL. “There’s a lot to this story I believe that will be told in the future,”
“I know this is difficult for people to understand, but he [Phelps] is going through a terrible trauma,” Cheshire told reporters. “And you know there are all kinds of stages to these things and he’s at the beginning of those stages. So there’s a lot of trauma to go around in all of this, in all of these cases always.”
A friend of Matthew Phelps, from his hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky is coming to his defense.
Melanie Duke told ABC11 that she knows the 28-year-old bible college grad as a man of God whom she allowed to babysit her children.
Last Friday (Sept. 1st), Phelps was arrested after admitting to a 911 dispatcher that he killed his wife Lauren Phelps, and he blamed it on the fact that he took too much cough medicine.
“I think I killed my wife,” Phelps said in a 911 call.
When the dispatcher asks Phelps what happened, he replies, “I had a dream and then I turned on the lights and she’s dead on the floor.”
“There’s blood all over me, and there’s a bloody knife on the bed. I think I did it,” Phelps continued.
He then said he had taken Coricidin Cough and Cold medicine before going to bed. When he woke up, he saw his wife, Lauren Phelps, dead.
Lauren’s friends describe her as bubbly, kind, and loving. They said the young couple married last November and that she dreamed of starting a family with Matthew, and becoming a stay at home mother.
A memorial service for Lauren Phelps was held Monday, Sept. 4, at Hope Lutheran Church in Wake Forest, N.C., where the couple was married last November. Her obituary identifies her as Lauren Ashley Nicole Hugelmaier, her maiden name, and makes no mention of her husband.
She is remembered as an active member of Hope Lutheran Church who worked with children and youth. Her pastor, Wayne Puls, requested prayers for her family “that God would strengthen their faith, and that they would continue to be comforted by his Word, in this time of tragic loss” and also “for the children, youth, and parents of our congregation, as so many of them have been impacted personally by Lauren’s death.”