AURORA | A man found dead with his common-law wife Saturday drowned the woman before hanging himself, police said Tuesday.
Art Medina, 32, and Maria Duron, 23, were found dead around 5 a.m. Saturday in the home they shared in the 2500 block of South Killarney Court.
The Arapahoe County coroner’s office performed autopsies on the couple Tuesday and said Duron’s death was a homicide and she died of drowning. Medina’s death was a suicide and the coroner’s office said he died from asphyxia due to hanging.
Police found Medina and Duron dead after responding to the home in southeast Aurora on a welfare check.
Aurora police Detective Bob Friel, a spokesman for the department, said investigators believe Medina killed Duron before killing himself. He said police are not looking for additional suspects.
Based on the evidence at the scene investigators believed early in the investigation that the deaths were a murder-suicide, Friel said, but waited for the autopsies to confirm that.
The couple had children together, but Friel declined to say whether any of the couple’s children were in the home at the time of the deaths. He said the children are safe and staying with family members in the metro area.
According to Colorado Bureau of Investigation records, Medina had been arrested eight times in Colorado since 2002. Most of the arrests were for traffic offenses and failing to appear in court. In January 2008 police in Adams County arrested him on a third degree assault charge that police said was domestic violence.
He was again arrested on a domestic violence charge in Lakewood later that year and charged with felony second-degree assault. In that case, the felony charge was dropped and he was found guilty of a misdemeanor. A judge later sentenced him to probation and gave him credit for two days served in jail, according to CBI.
No comments:
Post a Comment