Neighbors of a veterinarian murdered by her New Jersey State Police sergeant ex-boyfriend recalled hearing gunshots and several blood-curdling screams after he followed her home from work on Friday night.
Dr. Lauren Semanchik, 33, and her boyfriend, 29-year-old volunteer firefighter Tyler Webb, were found dead outside her Franklin Township home on Saturday afternoon after police say her jealous former partner, New Jersey State Trooper Ricardo Jorge Santos, shot them both before taking his own life.
“We clearly heard shots. We knew pretty quickly it was a pistol, which is unusual, and then, we heard screams,” one neighbor told WABC.
“And then that was followed by two or three more shots,” followed by a final shot, and then silence, another neighbor said.
Semanchik was clearly “terrified,” the first neighbor said, adding that “it sounded like she was running.”
The couple called 911, and a squad car pulled up “at least 10 minutes later,” but police never drove up the driveway to speak to the couple, they claimed.
Officers didn’t uncover the grim scene until 12 hours later, by which time Santos was dead by an apparent suicide in his car in Piscataway, a half-hour drive away.
Franklin Township Police Department did not respond immediately to requests for comment from The Post.
Dashcam footage from inside Semanchik’s vehicle shows Santos’s car following her home an hour before shots were heard.
She left her job in Long Valley, Morris County at around 5:25 p.m. on Friday, the footage shows, NJ Advance Media reports.
A white 2008 Mercedes SUV, matching Santos’, is seen leaving a parking space and following Semanchik closely for the half-hour drive back to Franklin Township, where she pulled into her driveway just before 6 p.m., footage from the rear of her vehicle shows.
At 6:11 p.m., a figure is seen walking through a wooded area along the driveway leading to Semanchik’s home.
Around half an hour later, at 6:45 p.m., Webb’s vehicle arrives at the house, parking next to Semanchik’s car.
Gunshots and screaming were heard at 7:08 p.m. from the area around the property, according to 911 calls made at the time by neighbors.
Franklin Township Police Department responded and checked the area, but said they did not locate the source of either the gunshots or the screaming.
It wasn’t until 12:22 p.m. on Saturday that police responded to a 911 call reporting an unconscious woman with physical trauma at the property.
Semanchik and Webb’s bodies were found with gunshot wounds.
Santos was later found dead in his Mercedes SUV, along with a semiautomatic handgun.
His death has been preliminarily determined to be a suicide, according to the Office of the Middlesex County Medical Examiner.
The shocking case is still under active investigation by the Hunterdon County Prosecutor’s Office.
Anyone with information relating to this investigation is asked to contact Hunterdon County Prosecutor’s Office Detective Sergeant David Petelle or Detective Quayshaun Brooks at 908-788-1129.
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