SALEM TOWNSHIP, Pa. -- Gunfire led to a death investigation at a home in Wayne County.
According to state police, this all boils to a double murder-suicide. Three people are dead, including the gunman.
Troopers say the shooter is William Rowen, 60. He's accused of showing up to his ex-girlfriend's house to confront her and her current boyfriend, and that's where he opened fire.
That woman and victim is Carrie Martini, 45. The man police say she was currently seeing is Dale Thomas, 61. Troopers say Rowen shot and killed both before turning the gun on himself.
This all happened in the Lakeville area of Wayne County down from the intersection of Route 590 and Rose Road in Salem Township.
Investigators believe William Rowen showed up to Carrie Martini's house off Eisenhauer Road Tuesday night to confront his ex-girlfriend and her new lover Dale Thomas.
"My daughter was on her back deck. She could hear yelling and screaming. She heard Carrie say, 'Please don't. Don't do that,' and that was it," said neighbor Nancy Eisenhauer.
Soon after, gunfire rang out. Police showed up. Nearby roads were shut down.
"At 2:30 in the morning, a megaphone went off saying, 'If someone is in your house, put out a rag on your door, sound an alarm, and we'll come save you.' It was frightening and it felt like they did that for a half hour," said neighbor Kathie Williams.
"We had no idea if there was another victim or shooter inside the home," explained Trooper Mark Keyes.
Investigators brought in a special emergency response team who used a robot to determine if the home was safe. Troopers would later learn William Rowen had shot and killed his ex-girlfriend Carrie Martini and her new partner Dale Thomas before turning the gun on himself.
"Her and Bill had been had been going out for a long time, 13 years, 11 years. I don't know what happened. He was thrown out of the house," said Eisenhauer. "Then she was seeing this other guy."
The shooter's last Facebook post gave us a look into his thinking before the deadly shooting. He wrote, "He gave his heart and soul to someone completely and then was brutalized told to act like an adult and move on!"
Eisenhauer says Martini was known to many. She ran two businesses in the community.
"She did landscaping and she also had a karate business."
Carrie Martini and Dale Thomas had only been dating a few months, according to a search warrant that says Martini's jealous ex-boyfriend William Rowen showed up at her home and opened fire with a shotgun taking both lives and then his own.
"I think all of us saw it, and none of us never said anything about it," Carrie Heuberger said.
Martini, Thomas, and Rowen were often seen at R Place near Hamlin. According to court papers, Rowen and Martini spent the last 15 years together before a breakup and now this.
"It's just a shock because everyone in this close-knit community of Wayne County knows all three of them and loves all of them so much," Heuberger said.
"It's had a major effect on this whole section of Wayne County," Marie Casper said.
Martini shared her landscape artist's touch at the Community Library in Hamlin. She had just started her relationship with Dale Thomas whose wife passed away recently, and now their children have lost both parents.
"I know that they would take the loss of their dad really, really hard. A lot of people in Waymart would as well," Casper said.
That karate school is located about five miles from Martini's home in the lower level of the community library in the Hamlin area where she taught tang soo do to all ages as well as women's self-defense classes.
For many around here, this double-murder/suicide makes for yet another crime that's rattled Wayne County in the past few weeks.
Several standoffs took place in the past month.
"There's other ways to handle stuff. You don't need to do that. There's people who will help or do things for you, help you through stuff. Too many people are getting hurt," Eisenhauer added.
Newswatch 16 also learned the shooter William Rowen also has a pretty extensive criminal background. In the 1980s, he was charged with robbery, attempted kidnapping, and aggravated assault.
