Man found slain in his Olney home

AN OLNEY WOMAN arrived home yesterday afternoon to a horrifying discovery: Her husband's lifeless body bound with duct tape and bleeding from the head on the floor of a second-floor bedroom.

She called 9-1-1 just before 4:30 p.m., and officers arrived to find the 40-year-old man on his back in a bedroom of the home at 2nd and Ruscomb streets, Chief Inspector Scott Small said.

He had a cracked skull and had been shot in his left shoulder and right hip, his hands and feet were bound and his mouth taped, Small said. He was pronounced dead at the scene at 4:33 p.m. Police found two shell casings, but were still working to determine the cause of death late last night. Police did not disclose the victim's identity.

Small said that police found that a window in the kitchen had been forced and the back door was open. The victim's wife told police that the window had never been opened.

"If someone breaks in and kills you in your own house, that's big," Small said at the scene. "To be killed in your own house . . . that's where you're supposed to be the safest."

About 9 p.m., as crime-scene investigators combed the house for evidence, some 30 people gathered on the street in the unseasonably warm weather.

The victim's mother, who did not want to be identified, cried and leaned on her grandson as she looked on. Another family member, who also declined to give her name but said that she was a niece of the victim, said that most of the group were family members. Relatives wailed as his body was carried outside about 10:10 p.m.

Small said that investigators weren't sure what may have been taken from the house but that a front bedroom had been ransacked.

"It's a pretty serious crime. It's not like we have any idea who did this," he said.