Wife had no idea of husband's love for victim

The wife of a Scottish teacher who shot and killed a 19-year-old girl and then killed himself said she had no idea her husband loved the girl so much that he would take both of their lives, reports said yesterday.

In an interview Cristiana Tron, 33, said she never suspected that her husband, Grant Dunn, 38, had any romantic feelings for Emanuela Ferro, who was one of her own students.

‘‘What happened, for me, has no rational explanation,’’ Tron said. ‘‘Grant was an exceptional person, a reserved but generous man.’’

Italian press reports said Dunn shot and killed Ferro on Saturday afternoon as she was about to drive out of her school parking lot in Pinerolo, 25 miles from the north-west city of Turin.

The reports, citing police and witnesses, said Dunn was apparently distraught that the girl did not reciprocate his love.

A letter Dunn gave one of Ferro’s friends minutes before the shooting in which he wrote of ‘‘being together, always, up in heaven and forever united’’. The letter was addressed to Ferro’s mother.

Police said Dunn fired seven shots from the semiautomatic pistol, six of them at Ferro and the final one into his mouth. A second gun was also found on him, the reports said.

Dunn, who was from Oban, met with Ferro three or four times in the past months to help the high school student with some English translations, the reports said.

Tron, Dunn’s wife, was Ferro’s Italian teacher at the school.

Christian Laggiard, 29, who was identified as Ferro’s fiance, told La Stampa that Ferro stopped taking lessons from Dunn when she sensed he was trying to court her.

‘‘He had written her two or three love letters’’ subsequently, Laggiard was quoted at saying. ‘‘She had described it as if he were a suitor she wasn’t interested in but never that it worried her much.’’