The houses where the killings occurred in Maryland. Photo / Twitter, WBALTV
Mary Ann Olson volunteered with her church, her family said. She was quick to help people on her block in the Brookeville, Maryland, area, too, so they said it was natural for her to open her home to a neighbour fleeing her husband yesterday.
Olson let the woman in, and when the husband followed with a gun, Olson tried to calm him.
But in a matter of minutes, Christopher Snyder, 41, opened fire, killing Olson, her family friend who had just arrived for a beach trip and a contractor working on her deck.
Police said all three had no connection to Snyder and were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Afterwards, Snyder retreated to his home, where police negotiators tried to coax him into surrendering for hours. At 11pm local time, officers forced their way in.
"Did they just break in the front door?" Snyder asked a negotiator over the phone, before hanging up and fatally shooting himself, police said.
Louise Tano, Olson's sister, said Olson was artistic and loved cooking. Olson had two children and was selfless. In short, Tano said the 66-year-old died as she lived.
"Mary would do anything in the service of others," Tano said. "She didn't hesitate a second to protect this woman in need."
Snyder's wife told police yesterday that he had held her captive in his home on a cul-de-sac on Brown Farm Way over the weekend.
Montgomery County police identified the visiting friend who was killed as Danny Lee Murphy, 70, of Brandon, South Dakota; and the dead contractor as Craig Harold Shotwell, 54, of Owings Mills, Maryland. Snyder's wife and two other adults managed to escape the home unharmed during the rampage.
Snyder claimed in divorce filings that he was formerly a member of the armed forces, served on classified missions and was a contractor for local law enforcement agencies, but some people who came in contact with him doubted some of those claims and others of his assertions could not be verified. The court records showed he had a troubled relationship with the ex-wife he had divorced last year.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Snyder had a federal license to be a firearm's dealer under the name Black Widow, and social media postings indicated he had an association with Code 3 Tactical Defence, a self-defence training gym in Columbia, Maryland, where one friend said he knew everyone.
Kareem Alalfey, who said he has known Snyder for years, saw him there as recently as last week. He said Snyder seemed in good spirits.
"I knew he was going through some things, but he handled things well," Alalfey said. "It's hard for me to even wrap my head around what happened."
Tano said she doesn't know what was said between her sister and Snyder as she tried to calm him, but the situation quickly escalated. Tano said there had never been any friction between Olson and Snyder previously.
"It's hard to imagine this only happened in the course of minutes," Tano said.
Todd Greenstone, a farmer who lives near Snyder's home, said he came across Olson's husband after the shooting as members of the local community waited at a post office for streets to reopen following the police investigation.
"My wife. I found my wife dead," the man said, according to Greenstone.
The man explained that when he'd come home earlier, he saw Snyder walking away from Olson's home with a long gun. Snyder turned around and looked at him. The man then went inside and saw his wife's body, along with Murphy's body, and saw Shotwell's body just outside the house, Greenstone said.