Colton Shaffer is facing a second-degree murder charge after police found a man in a bathtub who was shot and stabbed to death, police in Utica, New York, said. (Oneida County Jail)
A person in Utica, New York, called 911 on Saturday after seeing what appeared to be blood leaking from the apartment ceiling.
Officers responded to the apartment and discovered it was, in fact, blood dripping from the ceiling to the floor, the Utica Police Department said in a press release. The officers went upstairs to the apartment above to conduct a welfare check on the people inside. They knocked and announced themselves and a man came out “covered in blood,” police said. He immediately locked the door behind him and he was taken into custody as officers investigated further.
When cops entered the apartment, they saw a “large pool of blood, and what appeared to be an area where something had been dragged throughout the apartment,” the press release said. Police then found a deceased man in the bathtub. The Major Crimes Unit and the Crime Scene Unit were called to investigate. The victim, who is not being identified until his family can be notified, was “shot several times, stabbed multiple times, and suffered other injuries during the incident,” according to police.
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The man who cops found covered in blood was identified as 25-year-old Colton Shaffer. He’s facing charges of second-degree murder and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon. Additional charges could be forthcoming. Shaffer was taken to the Oneida County Jail. Authorities did not give a motive for the murder nor state the relationship between Shaffer and the victim.
According to the New York Department of Corrections, Shaffer spent just over a year in prison for burglary before he was released in September 2022. He spent a year on probation and has since been discharged, records show.
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