Authorities have identified the three people found dead inside a Montgomery home on Friday as David Grodnick, Lora Grodnick and Sloane Grodnick, and ruled the deaths a double murder-suicide. Lora Grodnick, 62, and Sloane Grodnick, 24, were found dead in separate bedrooms. David Grodnick, 61, was found dead inside the home with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The identification gives a name and a shape to the case that began a day earlier, when Montgomery Township Police received a call on Thursday, Oct. 1, just before 3 p.m. asking for a welfare check at a home on Wild Azalea Lane. Officers could not reach anyone inside when they went to the house, then entered shortly before 6 p.m. Friday and found the three bodies. All three were pronounced dead at the scene by medical personnel from Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, Somerset.
The medical findings split the case in two directions. Authorities said Lora Grodnick and Sloane Grodnick died from gunshot wounds to the head and that both deaths were homicides. David Grodnick also died from a gunshot wound to the head, and his death was ruled a suicide. John P. McDonald said the homicide deaths of both women were an isolated incident and there are no threats to the public from the tragedy.
That conclusion leaves the central question untouched: what led to the shootings inside the home. The investigation brought together detectives from the Montgomery Township Police Department, the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office Major Crimes Unit, the Crime Scene Investigation Unit and medical investigators from the New Jersey Northern Regional Medical Examiner’s Office, which performed the postmortem examination. For now, officials have identified the dead, explained how they died and said the danger has passed, but they have not said why the scene in Montgomery turned fatal.
What remains next is the work of piecing together the hours before police were called to the house and what happened between the welfare check and the discovery of the bodies. For Lora Grodnick’s family, the facts are now stark: she was found dead in a separate bedroom, her death was ruled a homicide, and authorities say the public is not at risk as the inquiry continues.
