Neighbors engaged in a snow shoveling dispute from this week’s significant winter storm in northeastern Pennsylvania are all now dead. In the northeastern Pennsylvania community of Plains, roughly 15 miles southwest of Scranton, Luzerne County District Attorney Stefanie Salavantis said a husband and wife were shot to death in the street outside their home just before 9am Monday.
The suspect who shot them was found dead in his home of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The Luzerne county coroner pronounced all three dead just before 11:30 a.m. Monday.
According to a joint statement released by Salavantis and Dale Binker, who serves as Police Chief for Plains Township, 50 year old James Goy and 48 year old Lisa Goy were shot to death by their neighbor, 47 year-old James Spaide.
“The Goys were shoveing the snow from their parking spots, shoveling the snow across the road, and throwing the snow onto Spaide’s property,” the joint statement said. Witnesses told investigators that Spaide asked the couple to stop, escalating the incident to a shouting match. Witnesses said Goy then took a tool he was using to remove snow from his car and threw it at Spaide. When Goy approached Spaide, Spaide retreated into his house, grabbed a gun, and returned to shoot them. The incident, captured on a resident’s security camera, shows Spaide firing multiple times into the Goys. Spaide returned to his house after killing them, where according to officials, he used another firearm to commit suicide as the police arrived and approached his home.
In the security video, Spaide can be heard muttering that the Goys are “scummy” before he appears in the frame, sparking an immediate reaction from the pair.
“This is bull s—,” Lisa shouts.
“You can go f— yourself,” her husband adds.
When Spaide returned with the gun, Lisa shouted, “Go ahead,” she urges her armed neighbor. “Go ahead.” After some more shouting, Spaide opened fire.
The Goy’s 15 year old autistic child remained in the house during his parent’s murder. He is now in the custody of his grandparents.
With the entire incident captured on video and the gunman dead, officials have declared the case “closed.”
This made major news organizations throughout the days afterwards. For some reason, it became a largely shared story in the United Kingdom.
But what may have made matters even more disgusting about this event has been two things 1) The social media response. Some have opined in ways that truly show the socials have become the ghetto of the internet.. and 2) The video.
THE VIDEO
For more than a day, several Youtube channels had the full video of the entire encounter posted.. It is really not clear how the video was able to be leaked so fast and how it remained on social media for the amount of time it did.
After all, any mention of the My Pillow Guys gets you automatically disbanded! But this video stayed for hours showing the murder of two people in broad daylight..
NBC affiliate WBRE reported this:
The video, which Eyewitness News will not be showing, was shared on social media and garnered over 1,000 views before being removed. Around 1:30 p.m. the link to the video had been disabled, stating: “This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s policy on violent or graphic content,” according to YouTube.
Eyewitness News has reached out to the Luzerne County District Attorney’s Office for comment and is awaiting response.
The image is out there of the encounter right before the first shot is fired .. almost all news sources are using that. The caption underneath reads that it is from the Luzerne County prosecutor’s office.
How the entire video leaked out is a question.
Why YouTube took days to remove is..
Meanwhile atrocious media was able to share it by the thousands before a crackdown began…
It seems to be offline now .. but with its short life span in the scheme of things, it is now “out there” in Internetland. Ready to pop up again in a future setting when you least expect the horror ..