06:57 PM PST on Tuesday, February 21, 2006

By ROBERT MAK / KING 5 News

YELM, Wash. - Was it a case of domestic violence or the result of a medical reaction?

It's a tough case in Thurston County. Now prosecutors are keeping two great-grandparents from seeing each other as they try to sort through what really was behind an attack last October.

KING

Eric and Margaret Attwood

The Attwoods had health problems and finances were tight, but they had great family support, two grown daughters in town, plenty of grandkids and great-grandkids, too.

They've been married sixty years and never thought they'd find themselves in their situation today.

Eric and Margaret Attwood gave up their condo. Their kids and grandkids pitched in to remodel a small home. They planned to spend their golden years living right next door to one of their daughters.

"It was a lovely condominium, but it was nice to think that mom and dad would have a house," said their daughter, Jennifer Rapuzzi.

"We just wanted to be able to take care of them, as they got older," said Hilary Carlson, another daughter.

But shortly after moving in, 82-year-old Eric Attwood, who already had been through open-heart surgery, cancer, double hernias and blood clots, started getting depressed.

"He lost his enthusiasm for doing things," said Margaret Attwood.

Concerned, the family took him to a doctor who prescribed an anti-depressant. The family says the drug made him obsessive and agitated.

Twelve days later, the unthinkable happened as the couple went to bed.

"I opened my eyes and the knife was already coming down… I couldn't believe it… it was already in," said Margaret. "I put my hands up and I got hold of his hands, and I pulled it out, you see."

Margaret Attwood recovered from the stab wound to her neck and police charged her husband with attempted first-degree murder.

Prosecutors are handling this as a domestic violence case, but the 79-year-old grandmother says there was no argument in six decades and they've never gone to bed angry:

"His face was just a blank, it was just like a zombie. I can't really explain it to you, but there was nothing there," she said.

Eric Attwood has now spent five months away – between jail and a mental hospital undergoing evaluation. And a restraining order keeps his wife from even seeing him.

The case illustrates the tough calls prosecutors often face. They've seen many victims of domestic violence in denial, and yet, here's a family convinced it's not domestic violence but a medical issue.

"I just want to see him, that's all. I want to tell him that I love him, you know. That's all I want to do," said Margaret. "I know it's got to take its course… He's not violent, he really is not violent, and he's not a criminal, and he's being treated like a criminal, and it hurts me."

The family believes that Attwood had a particularly bad reaction to the drug Wellbutrin, which lists as its possible side effects agitation and anxiety.

Most antidepressants come with a warning that patients should be monitored for suicidal thoughts or actions.

But such severe reactions are considered relatively rare and it's now up to the prosecutor to weigh the evidence and decide whether to go forward with charges.

The prosecutor says he's waiting for results of that 3-month mental evaluation and could not comment on an ongoing case.

Margaret Attwood says this past holiday was their first Christmas ever apart and she hopes that prosecutors will let her at least visit her husband in jail.