Police seek man suspected of slaying ex-wife, 5 others after contentious child-custody battle
Police were still searching late in the day Monday for a Pennsylvania man suspected of gunning down six family members in three different Montgomery County municipalities in the morning, including his ex-wife, after a long-running divorce and custody battle.
A military veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder, Bradley William Stone, 35, reportedly started the day at his ex-wife’s home, where neighbors said he broke in by firing shots through a glass door before leaving with the couple’s children, the Associated Press reports.
The children were reportedly found safe at a neighbor’s home, but five other family members are dead, and another person is injured.
Although Stone and his wife divorced in 2012, the court docket shows a lengthy list of motions and other filings over the course of the last five years, and a contentious child-custody dispute has been ongoing, according to the AP, the Morning Call and Philly.com. At least two neighbors told reporters that Stone’s ex-wife, Nicole Hill, had feared that he would kill her.
“They’ve been fighting for years, real bad,” neighbor Michele Brewster told the newspaper. “He’s been tormenting her. She’s gone to the police, and she has told everybody, ‘he’s going to kill me.”’
