The Orlando Sentinel

PORT ORANGE, Fla. – It was 4:30 a.m. Thursday when Glen Thomas Betterley woke up bleeding from his head. He couldn’t figure out why.

He asked girlfriend Emma Lorene Larsen if she had struck him, and she said she didn’t know.

The 53-year-old Betterley then cleaned himself up and lay back down to rest, but the bleeding wouldn’t stop. At around 6:30 a.m., police said, Betterley drove to work and left a note telling his boss he wouldn’t be coming in because he would be at the hospital.

When he arrived at the Halifax Medical Center emergency room, Betterley learned why he was bleeding: He’d been shot in the forehead.

Port Orange police said Betterley couldn’t tell them much about his injury or even where it had occurred. By 11 a.m. he was in serious condition and in surgery to remove the bullet from his brain, investigators said.

Betterley was in stable condition Thursday night, said hospital spokeswoman Kate Holcomb. She had no other information about his injuries.

About 8:30 a.m., while Betterley was being treated, police had tracked down his address and called Larsen. While on the phone with the 65-year-old woman, police said, they heard the sound of a single gunshot. When investigators arrived at the home, they found Larsen dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot to the head.

Few other details were available about the couple involved in what police are labeling an aggravated battery and apparent suicide.

Police did not release what caliber gun was used in either shooting.

Court records show that in April 2001 another woman obtained a domestic violence restraining order against Betterley. He was arrested twice for violating the injunction and pleaded no contest to the charge in one of the cases. The charge in the second arrest was dropped after the injunction was voluntarily dismissed by the petitioner.

The home Betterley and Larsen shared in the Commonwealth Estates park, a mobile home community in Port Orange, is decorated with an ivy-covered trellis, fuschia flowers and small benches for other potted plans. Neighbors said the pair kept to themselves.

“I kept my distance and didn’t get acquainted,” said one man who asked not to be named.

According to a doctor at Orlando Regional Medical Center, Betterley’s reaction to the bullet in his brain is not that uncommon.

“I’ve had patients with knives in their heads, screw drivers in their heads, lawn darts, small-caliber gunshot wounds to the head, where patients have been awake and talking,” said Dr. Jonathan Greenberg, the neurosurgery chair at ORMC. “The question is how important is the area that is damaged?”

Greenberg explained: As long as a low caliber bullet doesn’t hit any major blood vessels or enters what is called a “non-eloquent” area of the brain – an area that doesn’t have a specific, major assigned function – then a person can survive a seemingly serious gunshot to the head.

Sometimes, doctors don’t even have to remove the bullet from a patient’s brain, Greenberg said, adding that it’s just a matter of repairing the damaged area.

“It’s because you have to weigh the risk of causing damage to the brain in the process of removing the bullet,” Greenberg said.

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