Emily Anne Fatzinger, 25, of Greentown, Pike County, and Eric Ryan Messick, 33, of Walnutport, have been identified as the couple found dead in what Lehigh County DA Jim Martin called a “murder-suicide” in Upper Saucon Township.
Three shots followed by an eerie silence were what authorities heard outside a home off Lanark Road near Wedgewood Golf Course in a relatively remote section of Upper Saucon Township Saturday night–and police now say those shots were apparently the deadly culmination to a day that began with a police pursuit and ended with the bodies of two people being found in that home’s attic, following a murder-suicide.
Lehigh Valley Live reported Monday that the Lehigh County District Attorney’s office believes Eric Ryan Messick, 33, of Walnutport, may have fired a warning shot before killing his companion, Emily Anne Fatzinger, 25, of Greentown, Pike County, and then himself, rather than surrender to the authorities who at one point earlier had surrounded an empty home only to storm in and find it empty.
Messick and Fatzinger led lives fueled by drug addiction and punctuated by frequent run-ins with the law in a multi-county area, before ending up at the Knights Inn on Rt. 309 in Upper Saucon Township, where an officer who knew Messick had active warrants spotted them and attempted to pull them over before they eventually ditched their car at a building site for an over-50 community off Lanark Road and then fled on foot–with Messick firing a gun at the officer as he did so–the newspaper reported.
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