Lawrenceville, GA: Police investigate suspected murder-suicide

By Mike Morris and John Spink
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A man and woman found dead Tuesday morning in an apparent murder-suicide were in the process of getting divorced, Gwinnett County police said.


Gwinnett police spokesman Edwin Ritter said that the couple's 12-year-old son went to a neighbor's house around 7:30 a.m. and told the neighbor something was wrong with his father, and that he might be dead. The neighbor phoned police, who responded and found the couple dead inside the home, Ritter said.

While there were "obvious signs of trauma," Ritter said that investigators have not determined how the 57-year-old man and 50-year-old woman died. No one reported hearing gunshots, he said.

Ritter said the deaths "appear" to investigators to be a murder-suicide.

The home where the incident occurred is in a neighborhood of middle-income families off Old Peachtree Road, between Braselton Highway and Ga. 20, according to Ritter.

Neighbor Christopher Smith, told the AJC that he was awakened by the children screaming.

“All I heard was, ‘please help me, my parents are dead.’ I ran out the door and come to find it it was my next-door neighbor’s kids.”

Smith said the children, a 12-year-old boy and a girl, age 9, had gone across the street to another neighbor’s house, and that neighbor had called police.

Smith said he went to the house where the children lived “and looked in the front door and there was blood on the floor, so I stepped back to the street and waited for Gwinnett police to show up.”

He described the inside of his next-door neighbor’s home as “pretty much” a hoarding situation.

“Pretty messy – newspapers, bags,” with about a three-foot wide path to walk through the house, Smith said.

Smith, 26, said he has lived in the neighborhood for 22 years, “and they lived here quite a few years before I did.”

“I knew they wanted a divorce, but I never heard them fight,” Smith said. “They kept it inside, I guess.”

Staff writers Alexis Stevens and Larry Hartstein contributed to this article.

Tita Hall, 50, died from lacerations to her neck, the Gwinnett County Medical Examiner's office said. Her death has been ruled as a murder, authorities said.

Charles Hall, 57, cut and shot himself, the medical examiner's office said. He died from his gunshot wounds, and his death has been ruled a suicide, authorities said.