A neighbor heard gunshots, then screams. Later, two bodies were carried out and put in ambulances.
And now a family is in ruins, the victims of domestic violence, police said.
State police believe Scott Gellatly, 46, of Oxford, went into his estranged wife Lori Gellatly’s home at 43 Sioux Drive where she was with her mother, Merry Jackson, at about 5:30 a.m.
Police believe he shot both women several times.
Lori, 32, was pronounced dead a short time later at Waterbury Hospital. Jackson, 63, was listed in serious condition at St. Mary’s Hospital as of 1 p.m. Wednesday.
Police said two toddlers were in the house, but they were not physically injured.
“This was a very violent, certainly very tragic situation,” state police spokesman J. Paul Vance said during a press conference.
At about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, state police announced Gellatly was charged with murder, attempted murder, larceny of a motor vehicle, first-degree assault on an elderly person, along with two counts each of reckless endangerment and risk of injury to a minor.
Gellatly was held on $2 million bond and was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday at Superior Court in Derby.
James Smith, a neighbor, described the scene of the shooting.
“I heard three gunshots and two or three screams just before 6 a.m.,” Smith told a reporter from the Republican-American.
Smith called 911. As the operator answered, Smith saw his neighbor’s garage open.
He said he saw a man who was “probably Scott” running from the house and into a SUV.
The shooting touched off an approximate six-hour manhunt involving police all over the region. Police initially thought Gellatly had a hostage.
The search ended at 11:40 a.m., when Gellatly was found outside a restaurant off Route 8 in Winsted, about 40 miles away.
In the video below, police announce Gellatly is in custody.
Gellatly was found in a vehicle with a hose running from the exhaust pipe, police said in an afternoon press conference in Oxford. He didn’t resist police.
State police weren’t commenting as of 1 p.m. on the suspected motive for the crime. They had been to the address in previous calls for service, but couldn’t elaborate on those calls as the manhunt was underway Wednesday.
But, according to the court clerk’s office in Superior Court in Milford, Lori Gellatly had applied for a protective order against Scott Gellatly, but it had not been served.
She applied for another protective order, a hearing on which was to take place Thursday.
Merry Jackson, Lori Gellatly’s mother and the surviving shooting victim, had also applied for a protective order against her son-in-law, as did Gellatly’s ex-wife.
Scott Gellatly’s publicly available Facebook page contains a rambling April 6 post detailing the deterioration of the couple’s relationship.
In the 448-word post, he writes about telling Lori he needed a vacation to get away from her, “so the only person I can heart (sic) is myself.”
He alleges infidelity in the post.
The post concludes with “god I trust in you I believe in you you are saver (sic) and one day soon I will see you.”
Gellatly was initially taken into custody on a misdemeanor warrant out for his arrest, according to Vance, the state police spokesman. The details of the warrant weren’t clear Wednesday.
State police took Gellatly to a Torrington hospital for treatment before lodging charges against him in connection to Wednesday’s shooting.
Click the play button to hear Vance talk about how the suspect was taken into custody.
Wife: ‘I Am Afraid For Myself And My Kids’
Gellatly’s wife, ex-wife, and mother-in-law applied for protective orders against Gellatly last month at Superior Court in Milford.
Their concerns — he was acting erratically, wasn’t taking prescribed medications, and owned guns.
Lori Gellatly filed an application for a protective order April 3, saying the two argued April 1 inside their home at 43 Sioux Drive.
“He acts out very violently and I am afraid for myself and my kids,” she wrote in the application. She wrote that Gellatly suffers from bipolar disorder but wasn’t taking his medication.
According to a statement she provided to police, the April 1 argument began because Lori’s mother had been watching the couple’s twin 16-month-old children, and one of Scott Gellatly’s children he had with his ex-wife.
About 5:30 p.m., Lori and Scott arrived home “at the same time.”
Jackson asked Scott why he hadn’t relieved her sooner from the babysitting duties.
Scott Gellatly “got very angry,” according to Lori’s account.
She tried to leave with their twin toddlers.
“He then told me I wasn’t going anywhere and grabbed my right thumb and twisted my wrist,” Lori Gellatly wrote.
She said Scott grabbed her arms and pulled one of the children away from her, almost dropping the child in the process, and refused to let her leave.
She wrote that Scott calmed down, but an hour later told Lori to leave with the toddlers because he wanted to be alone. He also called his ex-wife and told her to come get their kids.
Lori took the children to her mother’s house, just down the road at 55 Sioux Drive, where her mother allegedly showed her derogatory text messages Scott had sent her earlier in the evening.
The next day she checked the joint bank account they had and discovered Gellatly had withdrawn more than $18,000 from it. She called the bank but officials there told her they couldn’t do anything because Scott Gellatly was authorized to withdraw funds from the account.
A judge issued an ex parte restraining order April 3 mandating Scott Gellatly surrender any guns he owned and stay at least 100 yards away from his wife and two children.
A hearing on the matter was scheduled for April 17, but the protective order was dismissed that day.
“Parties failed to appear,” the court file says. “No service.”
Lori Gellatly filed another application for a protective order April 24, which was also temporarily granted.
A hearing on that order was scheduled to take place Thursday (May 8) morning.
On that application, Lori Gellatly wrote that she could not serve Scott with the previous protective order “in time to make it permanent.”
Mother-In-Law: ‘I Have Seen His Violent Side’
Lori’s mother, Merry Jackson, also filed an application for a protective order against her son-in-law April 3.
“I am feeling in danger because Scott is blaming me for my daughter leaving him with the babies,” Jackson wrote. “He has bipolar and not taking his meds. I have seen his violent side many times and feel since I watch the babies while my daughter works, he would hurt me to take the babies.”
A judge denied Jackson’s application April 3.
Ex-Wife Sought Protection
On April 4, Gellatly’s ex-wife also filed for an order of protection, as her ex-husband’s current marriage was falling apart.
The ex-wife wrote that Scott Gellatly told her that he planned to quit his job, go on a vacation, and that neither she nor the two children they had together would be hearing from him for awhile.
“He owns a rifle that we cannot find,” Gellatly’s ex-wife wrote in her application. “We’re not sure if he has it with him or not.”
The ex-wife wrote that Gellatly contacted her April 3 asking to speak with the couple’s children, but she would not let him.
“I did, however, (talk) calmly with him to tell him running away was not the answer,” she wrote.
A judge granted the application temporarily and set down an April 17 hearing in the case, but the order was dismissed April 17 with the same “Parties failed to appear. No service.” notation as the protective order in Lori Gellatly’s case.
Scott Gellatly’s Facebook page indicated he works as a fire systems specialist at Red Hawk Fire & Security, a Florida-based company with offices in Orange.
A woman answering the phone at the company’s Orange office Wednesday morning declined comment and referred a reporter to police.
“Unfortunately, we are not at liberty to discuss any of this,” she said.
Lori Gellatly worked for the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection for about six years as an environmental analyst in DEEP’s bureau of air management in Hartford.
She worked on programs to reduce air pollution, improve air quality and to protect public health, said Dennis Schain, a spokesman for the agency.
“It’s obviously a tragic and sad day here. Our thoughts and prayers are with her family, friends and colleagues,” Schain said.
Parents Worried
Some parents complained to reporters at the scene that school children were allowed to go to to bus stops Wednesday morning during an intense manhunt.
Oxford Schools Superintendent Timothy Connellan said canceling bus routes in the area would have been unsafe.
“If you decide at that point in time during the day to delay a route, what you’re doing is leaving kids standing at a bus stop,” he said. “The best thing to do was run those routes and get them done as soon as possible.”
Connellan said security was increased at the town’s schools after the shooting as a precaution.
“There was never an indication from anyone that there was a threat to any of the schools or anyone at any of the schools,” he said.
Police were sent to the town’s schools, he said, and students did not change classes.
After Gellatly was taken into custody, First Selectman George Temple used the town’s Code Red messaging system to alert residents.
This video is from a morning press conference near the shooting scene:
