HUNTINGTON -- Terri Lynnette Lowry married her husband on Christmas Eve 2009.

They picked the date hoping to find a magical love. One similar to that of their former neighbors in Chesapeake, Ohio, who the Lowrys admired for their long marriage.

A gunman's bullet shattered that dream about 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at a parking lot in the 1600 block of 11th Avenue.

Mark and Terri Lowry were traveling together to take her son to a friend's house. She said they made a wrong turn and pulled into the parking lot to find their way.

Within moments three young men approached the Lowrys' Ford Expedition. Two carried firearms and gunshots followed. One bullet hit Mark Lowry's chest as he leaned over to protect his wife, she said Wednesday morning.

Terri Lowry said the assailants' guns jammed as the barrels turned toward her and her 19-year-old son. She yelled as the assailants fled the area, and her son hurriedly drove to the hospital.

Terri Lowry now calls upon police to arrest those responsible to prevent possible vigilantism.

"I want those boys caught," she said. "They shot my husband in the heart. Our windows were rolled up, and they shot all through our windows and everything. It doesn't need to be unresolved."

Huntington Police Capt. Rick Eplin described his department's investigation as ongoing Tuesday. An earlier press release said an autopsy would determine the 48-year-old's cause of death.

Terri Lowry notified her husband's son, David Lowry, of the shooting by phone. He hurried to the hospital and bent over upon hearing the surgeon's tragic news. He had been raised by his father since his mother left at five months.

"That's the only person I had left in my family," he said. "That's who I always ran to when I had a problem."

David Lowry described the victim as hard-headed and hard-to-deal-with at times, but his 21-year-old son loved his father for what he was, a 48-year-old, God-fearing man blessed with a talent to fix automobiles.

"One of the best (mechanics) I've ever seen," he said. "That's what his passion was -- working on cars and racing."

Mark Lowry occasionally raced at drag strips and once built race engines at a shop in the Carolinas. He also lived in Florida, before arriving in the Tri-State where he raised his son. Chesapeake and Guyandotte were among local places he had lived.

David Lowry described their father-son relationship as one that sought risk.

"If it was dangerous, we did it together," he said.

David Lowry worked with his father to climb radio towers. They scaled the towers on behalf of his father's company, Mark's Tower Maintenance. Typical jobs would include installing satellite dishes and changing light bulbs.

Terri Lowry said she and her husband met nearly 20 years ago. They became reacquainted at Huntington's New Life Church. Mark Lowry had attended the church for years, including taking part in a mission trip to Haiti in the mid-1990s.

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