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Fairfield Police Release Details On Attempted Murder-Suicide By Mother

FAIRFIELD, Conn. — Fairfield police have identified the woman found dead in her Barlow Road home Saturday, after she apparently tried to strangle her 8-year-old daughter and took her own life nearly two years to the day after her husband had hanged himself.

Fairfield Police Department

Fairfield Police Department

Photo Credit: Meredith Guinness

Officers believe Ivanna Krekhtyak, 36, tried to kill the child before going to the basement to hang herself, police said Monday.

The investigation began when the girl went to a neighbor’s house and the neighbor called 911 at 10:23 a.m., police said.

Police and medical professionals interviewed the girl, who had non-life-threatening wounds consistent with strangulation, police said. Her story matched what was found at the scene, police said.

“The child is under medical care and (the Department of Children and Families) is in charge of making appropriate placement for her,” Fairfield Youth Bureau Detective Beth Irizarry said.

On July 22, 2015, police were called to nearby Round Hill Road on a report of a car blocking the roadway. The car was registered to the woman's husband, 38-year-old Vasyl Krekhtyak, police said.

When officers went to their home, Ivanna Krekhtyak told them she had been trying to reach her husband all day. He had been working in Florida, but had come home to see a doctor and had never returned to work, the man’s employer told police.

Police investigated, and a State Police K-9 unit helped make the discovery of his body hanging high from a tree inside the Round Hill Road entrance to the Fairfield University campus, police said.

During the investigation, officers learned Krekhtyak had been suffering from mental illness and had been hearing voices, police said.

Police said they had been called to the home and Ivanna Krekhtyak’s workplace on a handful of occasions before and after the 2015 incident to check on her wellbeing. 

In 2014, she was transported to St. Vincent’s Medical Center after a concerned co-worker called police because she seemed depressed and upset, police said.

At the time, she said her husband was away on work and her daughter was staying with her grandmother in Ukraine, police said.

The family had been living in the Barlow Road home since at least May 2014, police said.

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