New Mexico State Police are investigating after a Canadian woman and her American husband were found dead in a vehicle parked on the shoulder of a highway Thursday morning.
Ursula Tammy Kokotkiewicz, 32, and Jacob Kokotkiewicz, 31, both died of gunshot wounds to the head, police told Global News. Jacob was found sitting in the driver seat with a 9mm caliber handgun between his legs, and Ursula in the passenger seat beside him.
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The couple were found in a pickup truck that was parked on the shoulder of the east-west Interstate 40 highway. Police wouldn’t say how long the pair were believed to have been dead before their bodies were found.
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On her Facebook page, Ursula indicated she worked as an English teacher in the Dallas Independent School District, and previously attended the University of Toronto and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, graduating in 2014.
Her Instagram page was flooded with tributes and condolences as news of her death spread.
“My heart breaks… it will not be the same to look across the hall and not see you there in August,” read one comment.
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Ursula was born in Trinidad, while Jacob was a U.S. Army veteran who previously served as a deputy sheriff in Indianapolis, the Dallas Morning News reported.
Jacob was awarded an Indiana Distinguished Service Cross in 2013 for his “heroic actions” two years earlier following a concert stage collapse, when he performed CPR on an unconscious person and applied a tourniquet to an injured child, according to the army’s public relations wing.
Police said the bodies of both Ursula and Jacob Kokotkiewicz have been transported for autopsies, and that a suspicious death investigation is underway.
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