An abusive man shot dead the wife of a friend who took him in when he was kicked out of his home — then died from a mystery “medical emergency” soon after fighting the New Jersey troopers who arrested him, according to officials.
Armond Avitable, 38, was forced to leave home in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, on Monday after an unspecified “domestic dispute” with a woman he lived with, the Warren County Prosecutor’s Office said.
He called a friend, Kevin Schilling, who picked him up and took him back to his own home in Columbia, just across the state line in New Jersey.
But soon after he got there, Avitable got into yet another dispute, this time with Schilling and his 58-year-old wife, Cheryl Schilling, prosecutors said in a press release.
Avitable “became agitated and aggressive” — and grabbed a pump-action shotgun.
“He then fired a shot,” the prosecutor’s office said, with the Schillings racing upstairs to lock themselves in a bedroom.
Avitable chased after them — then “opened the door and fired two shotgun blasts,” the prosecutor said.
Cheryl Schilling was hit in the arm and upper left torso and later pronounced dead at the scene.
Avitable had already fled the home, telling neighbors sitting at an outdoor firepit at their home that “he had to shoot her because he (Cheryl Schilling’s husband) was coming for him,” authorities said.
The killer fired two more shots at the house where his friend’s wife lay dying, before ditching the gun and running away.
He was quickly tracked down — and “engaged the New Jersey State Troopers in a physical altercation,” the prosecutor’s office said, without elaborating on if there were any injuries.
Avitable was “subdued and taken into custody” — where he almost immediately “had a medical emergency,” the release said, without giving detail.
The killer was pronounced dead at a local hospital just after 9 p.m. No cause of death was given and authorities did not immediately state if it was directly connected to the fight when he was arrested.
Schilling’s death was ruled a homicide as a result of a gunshot wound to the torso, the Morris County Medical Examiner’s Office said.