Dale and Sharon Nyren were good people, according to their neighbors on the other side of rural Bayberry Road in Fair Haven Township. So Darwin and Carmen Pettis were shocked at the news that Dale Nyren is accused of shooting his wife to death in their home one afternoon last week. Sharon Nyren, 67, died Tuesday, Feb. 24, after being airlifted to Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis with bullet wounds in the head and knee. Dale Nyren, 70, was charged in Stearns County District Court in St. Cloud two days later with second-degree murder. He was being held in the Stearns County Jail. The court set bail at $750,000 without conditions and $500,000 with conditions. "They were just such nice people," Carmen Pettis said in a phone interview from her home across the road from the Nyren residence a few miles north of Annandale. "You never heard a bad word about them from anybody," Darwin Pettis said. "Never," his wife added. The couple said they’ve known the Nyrens since before moving there in 1985. She described herself as their "very good" friend. "I used to call them all the time and see how they were doing." She would inquire whether they needed anything and if she could do anything for them. "Sharon always had a big smile on her face," she said. "I never heard him swear." "I miss Sharon," she said, adding she isn’t angry at Dale Nyren. "I was shocked," she said of the shooting. "You just can’t believe this happening," her husband said, calling it a "shock to everybody." Still, his first thought when he saw the police cars at the Nyren property and the yellow crime scene tape around it was that he had probably killed her and then committed suicide. The reason he thought that was because the couple was in poor health and the husband wasn’t able to get around the way he used to. "You get just depressed with life." Dale Nyren, who used to build homes, suffered from bad knees and had to rely on his wife to drive him everywhere, according to the Pettises. Sharon Nyren had been in the hospital and then a nursing home a while ago and had lost a lot of weight since coming home, the couple said. He had been ecstatic to get her home for their 50th wedding anniversary about a year ago. The Nyrens’ 51st anniversary was Sunday, Feb. 15, nine days before the shooting. "They had their arguments now and then, like everybody else does," Darwin Pettis said. "Whether that had anything to do with it, I don’t know." "They had very nice sons," Jeff and Scott, his wife said, and raised their grandson Wade when their daughter, Robin, died in 1984 of hypothermia. Annandale businessman Jeff Lundquist said he knew the Nyrens, Dale better than Sharon, but he hadn’t seen him in about 15 years. Back then Lundquist would have a beer with him now and then. He "had a great laugh. I just liked him." "He was a great guy to sit and talk to. That’s what I remember about him." The Stearns County Sheriff’s Office said Dale Nyren called about 1:19 p.m. Feb. 24 and told dispatchers he had just shot his wife twice with a .22 caliber revolver. A criminal complaint filed in the court said sheriff’s deputies found the gun, a box of ammunition and four spent casings, one of them on the floor near Dale Nyren. Sharon Nyren was across the room with a wound to her head and blood around her knee. Dale Nyren told detectives he had been in an argument with his wife and shot her first in the knee and then 11/2 to two minutes later shot her in the head, the complaint said. Nyren said she hadn’t moved though he claimed he acted in self-defense. Deputies also found several bullet holes in the wall above her, and some appeared to have been repaired, according to the complaint. Nyren is scheduled to appear in court again on Tuesday, March 10. An obituary appears on page 3.
