After police were called for a welfare check at a New Jersey mansion, officers discovered a man had fatally shot both his wife and daughter in the head before he died by suicide, according to prosecutors.
The family members were identified as David Grodnick, Lora Grodnick and their daughter Sloane Grodnick in a Tuesday, October 6, news release shared by the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office.
Officers launched an investigation after they were unable to reach the Grodnicks while visiting their home located along Wild Azalea Lane in Montgomery Township on Thursday, October 1, the same day the welfare check was requested, prosecutors said.
When officers entered the home the next day, the evening of Friday, October 2, they found the bodies of Lora, 62, and Sloane, 24, in two different bedrooms, according to the prosecutor’s office. They had gunshot wounds to their heads.
Police then found David, 61, dead in another area of the home, prosecutors said. His death was ruled as a suicide.
“The investigation, which remains ongoing, has yielded that the homicide deaths of both Lora and Sloane Grodnick were an isolated incident and there are no threats to the public from this tragic occurrence,” the prosecutor’s office said in the news release. “No further information will be available for release at this time.”
David was an executive for real estate title insurance agency Land Services USA, Inc., according to his LinkedIn page. He held the position of senior vice president and underwriting counsel.
He and his wife purchased their Montgomery Township home for about $1.3 million in June 2021, according to court documents viewed by Patch.com.
The six-bedroom, five-bedroom mansion is now worth more than $1.7 million, according to a Zillow estimate.
Lori, a former Princeton resident, had belonged to the Bedens Brook Country Club in Montgomery Township and TPC Jasna Polana, a private country club featuring a golf course in Princeton, according to her neighbors, The Montgomery News reported.
Sloane had been enrolled in a master’s program at the Rhode Island School of Design after she graduated from the Savannah College of Art in Design in 2024, per the newspaper. Before college, she attended the Hun School of Princeton.
Authorities haven’t specified a motive for the murder-suicide.
The prosecutor’s office encourages anyone with information on the Grodnicks’ deaths to contact the office’s Major Crimes Unit at (908) 231-7100 or the Montgomery Police Department at (908) 359-3222.
Montgomery Township is about a five-mile drive north from Princeton.
