A man in New Hampshire wanted for killing his wife and young son plummeted 100 feet off a bridge that connects the state to Maine after police officers shot at him while in pursuit.
The ordeal began when the man called police shortly after 2 a.m. on Thursday to report a domestic altercation with his wife in Troy, Hampshire, reported ABC 7.
Authorities arrived at a home in the western part of the state to find the woman deceased with no sign of the husband.
Police were able to track his vehicle to the 4,500-foot-long span that connects Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Kittery, Maine, which sees tens of thousands of vehicles cross the bridge daily.
Once located, the man exited the vehicle while on the bridge and raised a weapon at the officers following several failed attempts to negotiate with police, said Col. William Ross, chief of Maine State Police.
One Maine state trooper and two New Hampshire troopers fired at him as he emerged, weapon raised.
After being shot, the man fell more than 100 feet from the bridge into the Piscataqua River, where his body was later retrieved by the U.S. Coast Guard.
Only then did the officers discover the couple's eight-year-old son, also deceased, in the backseat of his father's car.
Police were unaware the boy was in the car, said Ross, who adamently stressed that it was "abundantly clear" the child was not hit by any of the bullets fired by the troopers in the confrontation.
Paul Merrill, a spokesperson for the Maine Department of Transportation, disclosed that while there are multiple cameras in use on the bridge to monitor traffic, there is no record of the shooting because they are not set to record.
The cause of death remains unclear for both mother and son. However, the woman was found with a gunshot wound and is scheduled for an autopsy on Friday.
No names have been released.
