Coroner says husband shot wife to death, then himself

The couple’s daughter found the bodies when she went to check on her parents.

STAFF REPORT

POLAND — Five days after the bodies of Kathleen Mary Smith and William Carl Smith were found in their Stymie Road home in Poland Township, the Mahoning County Coroner’s Office has ruled the deaths as a homicide and a suicide, respectively.

The office issued a two-sentence statement late Monday afternoon that Kathleen Smith was a homicide victim with a gunshot wound to her neck.

Her husband, William Smith, committed suicide with a gunshot wound to his neck, according to the coroner’s office statement.

Their bodies were found Wednesday in their Poland Township home at 6931 Stymie Road by the couple’s daughter.

Both were 56 years old.

After finding the bodies, the daughter told a Mahoning County 911 dispatcher that she believed her father killed her mother and then himself.

The daughter, who lives down the road from her parents, went to check on them because no one had been able to reach them all day. That’s when she discovered the bodies.

The couple lived in the house, built in 1922, for more than 25 years.

Attempts to reach county Coroner David M. Kennedy and investigators at the coroner’s office Monday to determine what type of weapon was used in the homicide-suicide and other information about the case were unsuccessful.