BY KATHY BARATTA
Staff Writer
MANALAPAN – Gunshots broke the quiet silence of a Saturday night in the southern end of Manalapan on tony Fountayne Lane.
When the shooting stopped, three people, including a husband and wife, were dead and a fourth person was in a hospital recovering from gunshot wounds.
The Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office identified the dead individuals as Esat Astafovic, 41, and his wife, Violsa Astafovic, 35, of Fountayne Lane, and Alim Hodzic, 53, of Oakland Mills Road, Manalapan.
Esat Astafovic’s father, Rasim Asta-fovic, 74, was shot during the incident and hospitalized with wounds to his torso.
Authorities said Esat Astafovic was the brother of Hodzic’s wife.
The Astafovics were the parents of four children.
The prosecutor’s office said that at 11:16 p.m. Oct. 7, the Freehold Township Police Department received a 911 call from a person who reported hearing gunshots fired in the vicinity of Gravel Hill Road and Fountayne Lane in Manal-apan.
The location is less than a mile from Manalapan’s border with Freehold Town-ship.
At about the same time, Manalapan police received a call from a person reporting a suspicious vehicle parked in the bushes across from a residential area on Gravel Hill Road in Manalapan.
A Manalapan police officer who responded to Gravel Hill Road spotted what was later identified as a white 2004 Mazda pickup truck parked in the bushes. Authorities said the truck was registered to MRA Plaza Inc., 111 Oakland Mills Road, Manalapan.
As he checked the area around the truck, the officer saw a man walking toward him on Gravel Hill Road. As the man came closer, the officer saw that he had a gun in his hand. Drawing his own service weapon, the officer, who the prosecutor’s office did not identify, ordered the man to drop his gun, at which time the man placed the gun under his chin and fired, falling to the ground.
That man was identified as Hodzic. He was pronounced dead at 11:53 p.m.
An examination of Hodzic’s person revealed he had been carrying a revolver and a semiautomatic handgun. Also found was a knife in a sheath and a plastic bag containing live rounds of ammunition.
At the same time Hodzic was committing suicide, officers from Manalapan and Freehold Township were responding to the area. Upon reaching the home at 19 Fountayne Lane, they found Esat Astafovic lying in his driveway. He was pronounced dead at 12:03 a.m.
Upon entering the residence, officers found Violsa Astafovic lying inside the house and Rasim Astafovic shot in the upper torso. With Rasim Astafovic was his wife Rabij Astafovic, 66, who had not been injured. Violsa Astafovic was pronounced dead at 12:08 a.m.
Astafovic was listed in stable condition on Monday at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, New Brunswick.
Two of the Astafovics’ four children were in the home at the time of the shootings, but were not injured.
The prosecutor’s office said Hodzic left the Astafovic home after the shootings and then shot himself when approached by the Manalapan officer on Gravel Hill Road.
A preliminary investigation by law enforcement revealed that Hodzic and Esat Astafovic had been business partners in a New York window company. A financial dispute developed between the two men, leading to a civil suit in which Astafovic had recently prevailed and secured what authorities described as a substantial financial award from Hodzic.
The civil litigation ended the business relationship between the two men, according to the prosecutor’s office.
Saturday’s incident on Fountayne Lane was the second murder-suicide in Manalapan this year.
On June 19, Joseph Importuna, 38, killed his wife, Vincenza, 32, at the couple’s Bailey Court home before taking his own life. The Importunas were the parents of two children, ages 4 and 9. Both deaths occurred by gunshot.
Bailey Court is in a neighborhood of single-family homes off Route 522 (Englishtown-Jamesburg Road) in Man-alapan, just outside Englishtown.
Prosecutor Luis Valentin said Vin-cenza Importuna had made preliminary efforts to dissolve the marriage and had served her husband with documents the previous week.
Authorities are continuing to investigate the Oct. 7 Fountayne Lane murder-suicide. Anyone with information about that incident is asked to contact Detective Barry Dubrovsky of the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office at 1-800-533-7443, or Manalapan Detective Paul Seetoo at (732) 446-4300.