Mother, children shot dead in their sleep by Spanaway man are identified

A Spanaway family found dead in their home early Tuesday in a triple homicide-suicide has been identified.

The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department said Clinton Field shot his son and daughter while they slept in their beds before fatally shooting his wife of five years, Samantha Field.

He also shot their son, 2-year-old Ashen, and daughter, 4-year-old Ava.

Investigators said Field, 29, made several suicidal comments related to the possible end of his marriage to friends and family members before the shootings.

He posted on Facebook and sent a text message to his father before calling 911 about 1 a.m. Tuesday to report that he’d killed his family and planning to kill himself.

“By the time anybody knew what he’d done, it was too late,” sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said.

Dispatchers frantically tried to get Field back on the phone while a SWAT team rushed to the family’s home in the 5700 block of 209th Street East.

It was too late.

Field was found dead in the couple’s bedroom near his 32-year-old wife. A handgun was recovered nearby.

He had sought treatment for depression in the past and was upset about the deterioration of his marriage, Troyer said.

There was no history of abuse in the family and deputies had never been called to the residence.

“Our hearts are broken,” Tom Reardon, Samantha Field’s father, told KOMO. “We lost half our family in one person’s selfish act.”

Field was an administrator in the U.S. Air Force and based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. He returned from a deployment in Korea 14 months ago, officials said.

Clinton Field was originally from Florida. Samantha Field was from New Hampshire.

This story was originally published March 13, 2018 at 2:08 PM with the headline "Mother, children shot dead in their sleep by Spanaway man are identified."