Police have identified the mother, father and son fatally shot during a domestic incident at a home in Wolcott on Thursday and released a harrowing 911 recording.
The Wolcott Police Department received a call just before 6:30 p.m. on Thursday about a shooting on Bound Line Road where three people were shot inside the house, according to police.
“Well, I’m helping my friend move his parents out and his father just shot his mother in front of us and then shot him,” the frantic caller said on the 911 call. “There’s three bodies up on the floor.”
Arriving officers found one man outside who had called 911 to report the shooting, police said.
As officers entered the house, they found three people dead on the bedroom floor with gunshot wounds, according to police.
The three people were identified as 59-year-old David Cote of Wolcott, 55-year-old Michelle Cote of Colchester and their 34-year-old son, David Cote, Jr. of Colchester, police said.
During the preliminary investigation, police learned that the father was in the process of moving out, and the son and his friend were assisting. The mother, who had allegedly been estranged from her husband for a year and a half and was living in a different town, also showed up at the house.
Court records show that David and Melissa Cote were in the midst of divorce proceedings. None of the related divorce documents were available on the state judicial website.
“She owned the house and they were going to help him get out of the house. He was getting evicted,” Wolcott police chief Edward Stephens said in an interview with reporters. “I believe April 1 he had to be gone.”
According to Stephens, a dispute allegedly took place between the mother and father inside the home. The son and friend who were outside ran inside to assist the mother.
“The father had a gun pointing at the mother,” Stephens said. “The son tried to intervene to protect his mother. The father had knocked her down. He tried to grab the gun from the father. The father broke free and shot the mother, who is deceased.”
He then allegedly turned the gun on his son and fatally shot him, according to Stephens.
The friend of the son, who is a registered gun owner, took out his weapon and shot the father. “He called us right away,” Stephens said.
According to Stephens, there is no threat to the public.
”This would start as a domestic dispute, which as you know are usually our dangerous calls that we encounter,” Stephens said.
The investigation is ongoing, according to police. The names of the three victims were not released until Friday.
“We’re still trying to figure out exactly what had occurred, how it occurred, why it occurred,” Stephens said.
Stephens said the investigation could take hours. Police obtained a search warrant for the house and will be searching the house and gathering all the evidence they can gather “so we can have a clear-cut picture of exactly what happened. How many shots were fired, where are all the guns.”
Michelle Cote worked at the Cheshire Correctional Institution, according to the state Department of Correction. They said she was a correctional identification and record specialist who had been hired in October 1998, according to multiple media reports.
No charges are pending at this time. The friend, who was very shaken up, is cooperating with police, according to Stephens. “This is a matter of self-defense.”
