A New Jersey man killed himself rather than be arrested for murder after a seven-hour standoff with police in Toms River on Friday.
Maxwell Johnston, 35, was wanted for the murder of 25-year-old Gabriella Caroleo in Manchester Township on June 27.
After he shot himself in the head, a woman inside the home was charged with harboring a fugitive for letting Johnston stay in her home for four days knowing he was a murderer, according to the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office.
That woman, 29-year-old Elizabeth Mascarelli, suffered some kind of injury during the stand0ff and was taken to a hospital for treatment. She will be transfered to the Ocean County jail when she is released.
Before the standoff, US Marshals convinced three other occupants of the home to come out. Mascarelli and Johnston, however, refused.
Investigators have not indicated a motive for Caroleo’s murder. The mom of a 3-year-old son was found with a gunshot wound to the stomach and rushed to Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune where she died, Asbury Park Press reported.
Johnston was described as a “career criminal” with multiple convictions for guns and drugs who was released after seven years in prison in March 2022. He was jailed again between August 2023 and December 2023, although the charge was not known.
