Boyfriend Says Slain Woman 'Just Wanted To Be Safe'

By CHRIS URSO and JO-ANN JOHNSTON The Tampa Tribune

Published: Jul 22, 2007

WESLEY CHAPEL - Mirohim "Mimi" Gayre, the 37-year-old woman slain at a Pasco County shopping center Friday, had months earlier left her husband, who was living in Las Vegas.

She moved to Georgia to live with her mother, continued working as a marketing director for a hospital chain, and started moving on with her life, according to those who knew her.

But her husband, Tracy Gayre, 41, followed.

Thursday, Tracy Gayre tracked his wife from Georgia to Wesley Chapel, where she was planning to stay with her new boyfriend, Steven Duhamel, according to Duhamel.

The two had been introduced by friends and had been dating for three months. She visited every couple of weeks, when her work and travel schedule permitted, Duhamel said, and this was to have been one of their weekends together.

"She just wanted to be happy," Duhamel said. "She just wanted to be safe."

On Saturday, Duhamel, 41, gave this account of what happened instead:

Mimi Gayre planned to drive her Jaguar down from Georgia on Thursday. Duhamel would be at work when she arrived, so he left a key for her.

When she arrived, she called Duhamel to say her husband had followed her to Duhamel's apartment on Marsh View Drive. She refused to let him in. Mimi Gayre had been concerned her estranged husband might hurt himself, but she hadn't said anything before about being afraid her husband would hurt her.

Tracy Gayre wasn't around when Duhamel arrived home that night.

Tracy Gayre had a key to the Jaguar, though, and police say he took the car.

The Gayres then talked by phone, and Tracy told Mimi he would leave the car in the parking lot of the shopping plaza near Sam's Club on Friday.

Duhamel drove her to the shopping center and looked around. Mimi Gayre got out of his Jeep and into her Jaguar, and they prepared to leave in their separate vehicles.

Then Tracy Gayre pulled up in a rental car.

He jumped out, waving a gun, yelling: "'Is this what you want?'" Duhamel said.

The two pleaded with Gayre not to hurt anyone. Mimi tried to call for help on her cell phone, but her husband grabbed it and smashed it to the ground. Duhamel tried to call on his cell phone while Tracy Gayre continued waving the gun.

Duhamel said he believed that if they stayed by the car, both he and Mimi would be killed. He started running toward a store.

"Maybe [Tracy] would follow me and he wouldn't shoot her," Duhamel said he thought. He heard four or five shots as he ran toward the front door of a Mattress Giant store. The manager had started calling 911, and so did Duhamel.

Then Duhamel went back outside. The husband's car was gone.

"I could see Mimi" in the front seat of her car.

"She had these really beautiful eyes, and I looked into her eyes. I used to be an EMT and so I looked at her pupils and they were really big, and I knew she was gone. And I knew that I couldn't not do anything, so I started CPR as long as I could." He took off his shirt and pressed it into the wounds on her back. Then the rescue crews arrived and took over.

Tracy Gayre had fled in his rental car. Authorities chased his car through three counties - Pasco, Hernando and Sumter - before he finally stopped driving. Sumter County authorities tried to negotiate with him. But he shot himself with the same gun he had turned on his wife, according to a report from the Pasco Sheriff's Office.

Duhamel said he grieves for his girlfriend and wishes he could have protected her.

"I just want people to know what a good person she was."

Photographer Chris Urso can be reached at (813) 731-1565 and at curso@tamptrib.com. Reporter Jo-Ann Johnston can be reached at (352) 521-3062 or jfjohnston@tampatrib.com.