A mother of two young children was abducted and killed by her former boyfriend in what Florida authorities described as a domestic-violence murder-suicide, an incident that unfolded over the course of a single evening and ended with both the woman and the man found dead in a vehicle. Speaking at a late-night briefing, Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco and Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri set out what they said was still preliminary information, offering their condolences to the family and reserving particular praise for the couple's two children, who they said acted with remarkable courage as the ordeal played out around them.
According to the account given by the sheriff, the woman had taken her two young children to the beach that day and returned home at around half past five in the afternoon. As they pulled up to the house in Hudson, they saw the woman's ex-boyfriend, whom deputies identified as 47-year-old Troy Savitz, standing in the yard. The two began to argue, with officials saying the confrontation was ostensibly over a television set or some other belongings the man wanted returned. Investigators described the former relationship as an on-again, off-again and tumultuous one, and stressed that whatever the surface dispute, the underlying situation was far more serious.
As the argument escalated, the mother first tried to call 911 herself, but the man took the phone out of her hand so she could not reach help. She then turned to her children and told them to go inside and call 911, which they did. The sheriff said the child who made the call worked calmly with the dispatcher and provided the information that responders needed, and that both children behaved with extraordinary bravery. By the time the situation became clear, however, the mother was no longer at the home, having been taken by the man in what the authorities treated as a kidnapping.
Officials said the man had left in a rental vehicle he had hired, prompting a wide multi-agency search. The Florida Highway Patrol was notified, along with the Pinellas and Hernando County sheriff's offices, and deputies deployed canine units, drones and aviation resources to try to locate the car. A location ping eventually led investigators to an area on Platinum Drive, where one of the deputies spotted the vehicle. A drone was flown in to get a closer look, and officers, aware that the suspect was armed, approached cautiously before determining that there were two bodies inside.
By around seven o'clock that evening, the authorities confirmed that both the woman and the man were dead. The sheriff said information later emerged that a passer-by had seen the suspect driving through the area beforehand, and that shortly afterwards the man had taken his own life. Officials said it was not yet clear at exactly what point during the episode he had killed the woman, but they were unequivocal that he had shot and killed her before turning the weapon on himself, in a sequence they characterised as a domestic-violence murder-suicide compounded by apparent mental health problems.
The two children, aged 12 and 9, were not physically harmed, and officials said that based on the information available it did not appear the man had been trying to hurt them, even as they acknowledged he had placed them in grave danger. The children, who were the woman's and not the suspect's biological children, are now in the care and custody of their biological father. The sheriffs said the youngsters, who should have been spending the week getting ready to go back to school, were instead facing the start of a life without their mother, and the authorities said they were not releasing the woman's name at this stage.
In an unusually personal moment, the officials addressed the two children directly, telling them that their mother had instructed them to go inside to save their own lives and that they had done exactly what she asked. They said that when they listened back to the 911 recording they were struck by how calm and brave the children had been, and promised that the wider community would rally around them and ensure that support and resources were in place when they returned to school. The sheriffs also used the briefing to speak more broadly about what they called the scourge of domestic violence, noting that their deputies had dealt with another violent domestic incident only nights earlier.