DETROIT (AP) — An
Iraq war veteran wanted in the shooting deaths of his ex-girlfriend and
her pregnant sister in Michigan fatally shot himself in a remote West
Virginia cabin after seeing federal marshals closing in on him,
authorities said Wednesday.
Deputy marshals saw Thomas Fritz
holding what appeared to be a rifle when he ran into the cabin Tuesday
night in Sistersville, W.Va., a community on the Ohio border about 80
miles southwest of Pittsburgh, the U.S. Marshals Service said in a
statement. The deputies heard a gunshot and later found the 38-year-old
Fritz dead inside.
Authorities, who had been trying to track down
Fritz since Friday's shootings, had urged caution, saying the former
military police specialist was armed and dangerous.
Michigan State
Police Lt. Sean Furlong told The Associated Press that the marshals
went to investigate the cabin because it belongs to an associate of
Fritz's.
"He'd been there before," Furlong said. "This place in West Virginia is as remote as they come."
Furlong didn't know when Fritz's autopsy would be performed.
Authorities
said Fritz's ex-girlfriend, Amy Merrill, broke up with him about three
weeks ago. On the night of the killings, he went to her Blissfield,
Mich., home, where he had lived with her since last winter, to speak
with her. The two had a child together, who is a toddler, and Merrill's
two sons from a former marriage also lived there.
Police say Fritz
shot Merrill, 33, her 24-year-old sister, Lisa Gritzmaker, who was
eight months' pregnant, and their mother, Robin Lynn McCowan, who were
all at the home. The sisters died and McCowan is recovering from surgery
at a hospital.
The two sisters grew up in the area around
Blissfield and were well known. Merrill took her two oldest boys to
youth baseball games and Boy Scouts meetings. She and her sister were
extremely close, friends said.
Before moving in with Merrill,
Fritz was living in Sylvania, Ohio, a Toledo suburb where he grew up,
which is about 12 miles from Blissfield.
Fritz served in the Ohio
National Guard beginning in 1997 and later the Army Reserve. He then
spent nearly a year in Iraq with the guard's military police unit from
the spring of 2003 through early 2004.
That same year he received
an associate of applied science degree in criminal justice from Owens
Community College in suburban Toledo.
In 2006, Fritz was convicted
of sexual battery, deemed a sex offender and sentenced to a year in
prison in Ohio. Paul Dobson, a Wood County, Ohio, prosecutor, said a
woman accused Fritz of having sex with her at a party while she was
passed out.
___
Associated Press writer John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed to this report.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
This undated photo released by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction shows Thomas J. Fritz, 38, of Sylvania, Ohio, who served a one-year sentence on a 2007 third-degree criminal sexual conduct conviction.
