Authorities identified David Grodnick as the man who fatally shot Lora Grodnick and Sloane Grodnick before dying by suicide in a Montgomery home on Friday. Lora Grodnick was found in one of two separate bedrooms, and police later identified the three dead family members after entering the home shortly before 6 p.m. Friday.
Montgomery Township Police got the first call on Thursday, Oct. 1, just before 3 p.m., after someone requested a welfare check on the residents of a home on Wild Azalea Lane. Officers could not contact anyone inside that day, then returned and got inside Friday evening, where they found two dead women and a dead adult man.
Wild Azalea Lane check
The women were identified as Lora Grodnick, 62, and Sloane Grodnick, 24. David Grodnick was 61. Authorities said Lora Grodnick was the mother of Sloane Grodnick, and David Grodnick was Lora Grodnick’s husband and Sloane Grodnick’s father. Medical personnel from Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, Somerset pronounced all three dead at the scene.
Police said the adult man had what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound and was found in possession of a gun. The New Jersey Northern Regional Medical Examiner’s Office later performed a postmortem examination and ruled the deaths of Lora Grodnick and Sloane Grodnick homicides, while David Grodnick’s death was ruled a suicide.
Somerset County investigation
Detectives from Montgomery Township Police Department, the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office Major Crimes Unit, the Crime Scene Investigation Unit and the New Jersey Northern Regional Medical Examiner’s Office investigated the scene. Somerset County Prosecutor John P. McDonald said the homicide deaths of both Lora and Sloane Grodnick were isolated and that there are no threats to the public from this tragic occurrence.
The case remains under investigation, and McDonald’s statement leaves the unanswered issue at the center of the home: what prompted the shooting deaths inside the house.
