Thomas Tracy and Rocco Parascandola
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — An off-duty New York Police Department officer shot to death a man he suspected was having an affair with his wife, then turned the gun on himself, NYPD sources said Monday.
The murder-suicide happened about 10:40 p.m. Sunday outside Buffalo Wild Wings on Route 211 in Walkill in Orange County, New York, News 12 Hudson Valley reported.
The officer was driving a vehicle and tailing his wife and her boyfriend, who were together in another vehicle, when he crashed into them, a police source said. The boyfriend got out of the damaged vehicle and ran but the cop chased him down and fatally shot him, the source said. The officer then shot himself to death.
Gary DeYoung was walking his dog when he heard the crash. “Then one guy jumps out, comes over here and starts shooting away,” DeYoung told News 12. “I was like, ‘Whoa.’ I called 911. By that time, there was two deceased on the ground here in the parking lot.”
“Officer Sean Armstead, 36, had followed spouse Alexandra Vanderheyden, 35, and her 20-year-old beau, Edward Wilkins, to a La Quinta Inn in upstate Wallkill around 10:30 p.m. Sunday,” the New York Post reports.
Armstead allegedly chased them from their hotel room and then fled in a vehicle that he followed.
He eventually slammed his car into theirs near the intersection of Route 211 East and Tower Drive outside a Buffalo Wild Wings.
When the 20-year-old, identified as Edward Wilkins, fled the vehicle after the accident, Armstead fired 16 rounds at him.
Reported double homicide at Buffalo Wild Wings in Wallkill .. Orange County. pic.twitter.com/hEUDI2Ury3
— Mark Lieb (@rocklandvideo) May 9, 2022
After killing Wilkins, he reloaded his weapon and took his own life.
Armstead had been with the NYPD in July of 2011.
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