A man and woman from Fair Haven are in custody in New Hampshire, where authorities said they allegedly broke into a post office as they tried to evade police while on the run from a slaying in Rutland.
Courtney Samplatsky, 34, and Michael O’Brien, 35, were arrested early Wednesday morning in Salisbury, New Hampshire, according to a press release from New Hampshire State Police. Salisbury is about a two-hour drive from Rutland.
An arrest warrant was issued Wednesday by Rutland Superior Court Judge David Fenster for Samplatsky on a charge of second-degree murder in Saturday’s shooting death of Sincere Johnson, 46, of New York.
The warrant also charges Samplatsky with aggravated assault for allegedly pointing a firearm at another man on the same day as the fatal shooting.
Another warrant issued by the judge Wednesday sought O’Brien’s arrest on charges of aiding in the commission of second-degree murder in Johnson’s death.
Rutland City Police reported Sunday finding a man dead inside an apartment building at 76 Baxter St. Police have released few details into the man’s identity or how he died, terming it a “suspicious death” that was under investigation. The killing is believed to have occurred the previous night.
However, the warrants and supporting affidavits filed by Rutland City Police Detective Cpl. Adam Lucia identify the man killed as Johnson. The documents indicat that an autopsy conducted earlier this week at the Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Burlington revealed that Johnson’s death had been ruled a homicide.
News of the warrants in the murder case was first reported by the Rutland Herald.
In the New Hampshire case, police received a report around 2 a.m. Wednesday of a vehicle off Old Turnpike Road in Salisbury. Arriving rescue crews reported hearing two people inside the nearby post office, according to police.
A man and a woman, later identified as O’Brien and Samplatsky, had fled the crash scene to escape and broke into the post office by smashing a window, police said. They eventually agreed to surrender and were taken into custody, police said.
During the investigation, New Hampshire State Police reported, they learned that O’Brien and Samplatsky were “persons of interest” in a homicide in Rutland. The pair was arrested and jailed in New Hampshire on charges of burglary, criminal mischief and conduct after an accident, according to police.
Ian Sullivan, Rutland County chief deputy state’s attorney, said late Thursday afternoon he hadn’t yet been informed by New Hampshire officials if Samplatsky and O’Brien had agreed to waive extradition to Vermont.
Lucia, the Rutland City Police detective, wrote in an affidavit in the murder investigation that the probe began around 5 a.m. Sunday. That’s when a woman arrested on an unrelated warrant reported to an officer that she knew where “a body is at, someone got murdered tonight,” the detective wrote.
The woman reported that her friends, O’Brien and Samplatsky, had plans to “rob a drug dealer,” and that Samplatsky “shot the drug dealer in the face” during a fight, according to the affidavit. The woman also told police her friends then left the body in the apartment at 76 Baxter St.
The woman, who was not at the apartment at the time of the shooting, said she talked to a tenant, Bradley Saldi, who told her to look for herself when she didn’t believe him that there was a dead body inside. She saw a body on the floor, she told police.
“I know from prior law enforcement encounters 76 Baxter Street Apartment 3 is occupied by Saldi and has been the target location for search warrants for the distribution of narcotics, in the past,” Lucia wrote in the filing.
Johnson’s body was found by police in the apartment face down on the floor in the living room with a gunshot wound to his head, according to the affidavit.
The woman also reported that Saldi told her that Samplatsky was bragging about shooting Johnson, who she knew as Corey, in the face three times.
Police said they then talked to Samplatsky and O’Brien over the phone Sunday, with O’Brien reporting that they went to Saldi’s apartment on Baxter Street to talk to him about “some construction side work.”
Samplatsky and O’Brien denied taking part in the shooting while they were at the apartment, saying it was another man who was there who shot and killed Johnson. Fearing they would be killed too, they told police they fled to New Hampshire.
Saldi, in an interview with police, reported he wasn’t at the apartment at the time of the shooting, and that he had been renting a room to Johnson to stay there. Saldi reported that before leaving his apartment on the night of the shooting, both Samplatsky and O’Brien were still there and had firearms, the court filing stated.
He then told police, the affidavit stated, that he felt Samplatsky and O’Brien “depict Bonnie and Clyde.”
