A 44-year-old man fatally shot a woman before turning the gun on himself during a domestic attack in Wheeling, officials said Friday.
Friday autopsies determined Marisa Dister, 46, died of a gunshot wound to the neck and her death was ruled a homicide, while Russell O’Connor, 44, died of a gunshot wound to the head in a suicide, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Dister and O’Connor, who lived in the 300 block of West 12th Street, were pronounced dead at 6:29 p.m. Thursday, the medical examiner’s office said.
Police, who said the two were in a “strained domestic relationship,” responded to a call of someone who found their bodies in a home in the 300 block of West 12th Street at about 5:42 p.m. Thursday.
A gun was recovered near their bodies.
Police said there isn’t a threat to the public and an investigation is ongoing.
On Friday in the quiet residential area, one neighbor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the couple had moved in about 14 years ago and had always been “very good neighbors.” During a snowstorm last winter, she said O’Connor had cleared her driveway in the morning without her asking.
“They never argued with us, no mean conversations or raised voices, just always nice and helpful,” the neighbor told the Sun-Times. “They were very good neighbors, very friendly.”
However, she said neighbors hadn’t been given any information, and she only found out there were bodies in the home when she saw the news Friday morning.
Her only indication of what had happened was the crime scene tape and police presence on her block, in addition to the fact that she didn’t hear the couple’s dog barking.
Regardless, she said she hoped police were able to figure out what happened because they were “too young to die.”
“I’m so upset and shaken by the fact that this happened,” the neighbor said. “Two people died, we don’t know why, and it’s sad because they were good people.”
Another neighbor, who didn’t want to be identified, said he hadn’t known the couple, or their names, until he saw news articles Friday morning.
However, he had heard shouting matches between the couple regularly and had seen police show up at the house six times in the six years he’d lived there.
He said each time two or three squad cars would show up just to leave 30 minutes later.
“They’d call each other names and stuff,” he told the Sun-Times, noting he may have missed some incidents while traveling for work.
He said his stepdad had heard them arguing Thursday night, but never heard gunshots.
“Being a few houses down I thought, I’d hear something, but no,” he said. “Nothing.”
As of Friday afternoon, officers were going door-to-door speaking with residents.
