Murder-Suicide in Broad Daylight at Germantown Gas Station
A man fatally shot a woman at a busy Germantown gas station on Tuesday. When an off-duty police officer tried intervene, the man killed himself.
Montgomery County Police received numerous calls of gunshots at the gas station at 20510 Germantown Road at the intersection of Route 118 and Route 355 at 12:24 pm on Tuesday afternoon, August 4.
According to Montgomery County Police, there were three people in a black Cadillac Escalade, two females and a male, at the pumps in the Washingtonian Gas Station. “Apparently there was some sort of argument,” said Montgomery County Police Public Information Officer Capt. Paul Starks. “The male subject shot an adult female, and then himself.”
Starks said, “There was an off-duty officer at the gas station in his marked police vehicle but not in uniform. He heard one gunshot, went to the vehicle in an attempt to intervene. He made contact with the male subject and identified himself as a police officer. At this point, the male subject then put the gun to his own head and shot himself.”
Starks said the off-duty officer did not fire his weapon. Police have recovered the murder weapon at the scene.
The female was transported to a local trauma center in grave condition. She succumbed to her injuries a few hours later. The male was pronounced dead at the scene. The surviving female witness, who was not injured, is being interviewed by police.
Police believe that the dead man and the murdered woman were romantically involved, but could not confirm if they were married or not. “We are investigating this as a domestic-related murder-suicide that involves a firearm. We believe that these two parties the adult male and female were involved in a relationship or had been,” said Starks.
“It is extremely unusual for something like this to happen in this area,” said Starks. “However, it is too frequent that we have this type of domestic-based violence and violence that involves a firearm.”
Germantown resident Jack Gaegler, who lives nearby the gas station said, ““I don’t come into this gas station all the time, at night because there is always people hanging out. I don’t think it says anything about Germantown. I just think it just happened to happen here as they were getting gas. It is too bad. However, it doesn’t make you feel safer; that’s for sure.”
Captions:
Top: Police cars line Germantown Road outside the Washingtonian Gas Station where a man fatally shot a woman and killed himself on Tuesday afternoon.
Next: A photo of a handgun at the scene of the murder-suicide in Germantown.
Next: A deceased male body lies next to a black Cadillac Escalade in the Washingtonian Gas Station on Germantown Road after police say he shot a woman believed to be his wife or girlfriend and put the gun to his head and killed himself as an off-duty police officer attempted to intervene.
Next: A police investigator inside the Cadillac Escalade in which a woman was shot and killed on Tuesday afternoon.
Photos by Germantown Pulse.
