Maryland couple’s fight starts with drunk husband peeing on the floor, ends with the family getting a ‘life sentence’

A Waldorf, Maryland, man who shot his wife in the back of the head after a late-night argument sparked by his drunkenly urinating on the floor has been sentenced to life in prison plus 15 years.

The jury sentenced Travis Edward Paschal Wood, 36, on Jan. 8, 2026, after his conviction for first-degree murder and use of a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence in the 2022 killing of Shawnda Nicole Wood, according to the Charles County State’s Attorney’s Office.

The night Wood was killed

On the evening of Dec. 8, 2022, Wood and his wife spent time with their three young daughters, going out to eat and shop before returning home to put the children to bed. Later that night, the couple went out again, visiting a hookah lounge, where they drank alcohol before returning home around 2 a.m.

Once back at the house, an argument broke out. According to prosecutors, Shawnda confronted Wood for urinating on the floor outside the bathroom because he was drunk. During the dispute, she told him that he needed to be out of the house by that weekend.

After the argument, Shawnda went to bed and fell asleep. Prosecutors said Wood then retrieved his registered handgun, entered the bedroom, and shot her once in the back of the head while she slept.

Wood took the kids to their grandparents

At about 8:30 a.m. the following morning, Wood woke the couple’s daughters and told them they were going to visit their grandmother. He instructed the children not to wake their mother or enter the bedroom, authorities said, before driving them to his mother’s home.

After dropping off the children, Wood returned to his residence and remained there for several hours. He later went back to his mother’s house, where he confessed that he had shot and killed his wife, prosecutors said. Wood then returned to the home before eventually going to the Charles County Sheriff’s Office District Three Station in Waldorf with a female cousin.

At the station, Wood requested a welfare check at his residence. He told an investigator he had been suicidal the night before and requested a lawyer, but did not initially disclose the killing.

When deputies responded to the home, they entered through an unlocked front door. Inside the bedroom, they found Wood deceased with a single gunshot wound to the back of her head, and a silver and black handgun on the bed. Forensic testing later identified Wood’s DNA on the firearm.

During sentencing, Assistant State’s Attorney John Stackhouse emphasized the lasting impact of the killing on Shawnda Wood’s family, particularly the couple’s three young daughters.

“These three little girls had to be taken out of their house, school, and neighborhood,” Stackhouse told the court, describing the harm as “generational trauma” and saying Wood “gave his family a life sentence.”
Before imposing the sentence, Circuit Court Judge H. James West described the crime as exceptionally callous. “The loss is tremendous,” the judge said. “It was done in the coldest of blood. The level of violence was extreme. The callousness that followed is rarely seen.”