Angered by his wife’s demand to leave their home after he drunkenly urinated outside the bathroom, a Maryland man took drastic and fatal action. While his spouse slept, he fatally shot her in the back of the head.

Travis Edward Paschal Wood, now 36, will spend the remainder of his life imprisoned for the murder of his 32-year-old wife, Shawnda Nicole Wood, as reported by the Charles County State Attorney’s Office.

The case unfolded on December 9, 2022, when Travis Wood approached the Charles County Sheriff’s Office, requesting a welfare check at his Waldorf residence, a suburb near Washington, D.C., before asking to speak with an attorney.

Officers arrived at the home located on Tawny Drive and entered through an unlocked door. Inside, they discovered Shawnda Wood deceased, having suffered a gunshot wound to the back of her head as she lay in bed. A firearm with her husband’s DNA was also found at the scene.

Investigations revealed that the couple had dined out with their three children the evening before the tragedy. After returning home and dropping off the kids, they visited a hookah lounge for drinks, arriving back at their home around 2 a.m. It was after this that Travis Wood urinated on the floor outside the bathroom.

This incident led Shawnda to tell her husband he needed to vacate the premises by the weekend.

“While the victim lay in bed asleep, Wood retrieved his registered firearm and shot her one time in the back of her head,” prosecutors wrote.

Around 8:30 a.m. on the day in question, the suspect woke up his three young daughters and told them they were going to their grandmother’s house. He instructed them not to wake up their mother or go into her room. Then he drove the kids to his mother’s house before returning to his home for a couple hours.

After he came back to his mom’s house, he admitted to her that he killed his wife. He again returned back to his home before he went to the police station. Prosecutors did not say what he was doing in his home after the murder.

Assistant State’s Attorney John Stackhouse spoke during the sentencing about the impact Shawnda Wood’s death has had on her children:

These three little girls had to be taken out of their house, school, and neighborhood. They had to be taken away from all their friends. All those things are a result of his actions. Their lives have been changed forever. [The victim] never got the opportunity to do Girl Scouts with her girls, see them play sports, go on their first date, graduate high school or college, get married, or have kids. All of that was taken from her by the person who is supposed to protect his wife and kids. Little girls need their mother. All those things were taken from Shawnda and her kids too. The level of betrayal is immeasurable in this case. This has the added trauma of three little girls trying to wrap their mind around the fact that their father murdered their mother while they were asleep in their house.

Judge H. James West on Thursday sentenced Travis Wood to life in prison plus 15 years for first-degree murder and use of a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence.

“The loss is tremendous,” the judge said. “It was done in the coldest of blood and I don’t understand it. The level of violence was extreme. The callousness that followed is rarely seen. The damage done to two families was excessive and permanent.”

Shawnda Wood’s daughters were ages 11, 9 and 8 at the time of her murder.

“We are devastated that her precious life was taken away from us and her three beautiful daughters,” her family wrote in a GoFundMe.