A death investigation is underway in Somerville, N.J., after a SWAT team responding to a report of a gunshot found an armed man lying on a couch surrounded by handguns, and a woman’s body decomposing on the kitchen floor.
The initial call from a neighborhood resident came in at 1:08 p.m. Sunday. Arriving police could not get a response from inside the house, so they called in a SWAT team that eventually had to force their way in.
Inside they found 66-year-old Thomas Shaulis, who they arrested and took to the hospital under police guard. The woman in the kitchen was dead and “in advanced stages of decomposition,” while the house itself had “hoarder-like conditions with an infestation of bed bugs,” the prosecutor’s office said.
The woman will be autopsied and identified at the Northern Regional Medical Examiner’s Office, which will determine how and why she died, and notify next of kin.
Shaulis was charged with second-degree possession of a firearm for an unlawful purpose and will be jailed pending a detention hearing once he’s released, Somerset County Prosecutor John McDonald said. Police also removed “numerous firearms and ammunition” from the house, and found two bullet holes in a home on the street when they canvassed the neighborhood.
Detectives from the Somerville Police Department, the Somerset County Prosecutor’s Office Major Crimes Unit, the Crime Scene Investigations Unit, and medical investigators from the New Jersey Northern Regional Medical Examiner’s Office all worked the scene, McDonald said.
