Bridgeport cops suspect murder-suicide attempt in domestic shooting

A police van sits parked outside of a Chase Avenue home where detectives investigated a suspected murder-suicide attempt that left a couple seriously injured Friday morning in Bridgeport, CT, Oct. 21, 2016. A police van sits parked outside of a Chase Avenue home where detectives investigated a suspected murder-suicide attempt that left a couple seriously injured Friday morning in Bridgeport, CT, Oct. 21, 2016. Photo: Cedar Attanasio / Hearst Connecticut Media Buy photo Photo: Cedar Attanasio / Hearst Connecticut Media Image 1 of / 5 Caption Close Bridgeport cops suspect murder-suicide attempt in domestic shooting 1 / 5 Back to Gallery

BRIDGEPORT — A suspected murder-suicide shattered a home and shocked a Chase Avenue neighborhood Friday morning.

Officials said they believe a man shot his wife in the face before shooting himself in the head.

“It was a domestic incident,” said Bridgeport police spokesman Av Harris.

The man and the woman, whose names were not released, were rushed to St. Vincent’s Medical Center shortly after 4:45 a.m. Both were initially listed in critical condition.

By afternoon, the woman’s condition was serious but stable, while the suspected shooter remained in critical condition, according to Harris.

The couple have at least one young child, according to Danny Dacruz, owner of a mechanic’s shop a few doors down from the home where the shooting occurred.

“Everybody is kinda sad, shocked more,” Dacruz said, standing in front of his shop, at the entrance of the dead-end street.

“Every afternoon it was ‘hello,’ ‘goodbye.’ Now we don’t know if we’ll ever have that chance again,” he said.

Every so often, his workers paused Friday afternoon to watch detectives walking in and out of the two-story condo where the couple lived, and the arrival of news reporters.

Dacruz said he had serviced the husband’s car several times, but only knew him by a nickname.

“Very good people. Hardworking people,” Dacruz said. “It’s a shame.”

Officials declined to release the age of the child, or to say whether he or she had been present at the time of the shooting.

Three Bridgeport homicides were committed by intimate partners between 2000 and 2015, and an average of 14 occur every year in Connecticut, according to a September report by the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence.