Wheeling police are investigating after a couple was discovered dead at a home during a well-being check Thursday.
Shortly before 5:45 p.m., officers responded to a residence in the 300 block of 12th Street after a call from a person who found two people who appeared to be dead after going to the home to check on them, officials said. A firearm was found next to their bodies.
Police identified the deceased as the residents of the home who were a couple involved in a strained relationship, officials said.
Friday morning, they were identified as Marisa Dister, 46, and Russell O’Connor, 44, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
The official cause of death was pending autopsy results.
According to the Wheeling Police Department, there is no reason to believe a greater threat to the public exists.
Court records with the names of Dister and O’Connor and Dister’s Wheeling address appear to document the tumultuous relationship of the one-time couple.
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In 2016, O’Connor was granted an order of protection against Dister in which he said he feared for his life, according to court records.
In the petition, O’Connor wrote that Dister would not vacate his home after the two broke up. He wrote that Dister attempted suicide by consuming pills multiple times at his house, or while parked across the street.
O’Connor called Des Plaines police at least six times over a six-month period because she threatened violence, he wrote in the petition. He wrote that she had watched his house, looked through the windows and on one occasion punched him, according to the petition.
He called police to do a well-being check after receiving multiple text messages from her that threatened suicide, he wrote, and police found her parked outside his house. She drove into a pole after taking a “full bottle” of Xanax with vodka, the petition said.
At the time of filing, O’Connor wrote that she was being treated in a hospital psychiatric ward.
“I’m scared for my life, once she is released from the hospital,” he wrote. “In the last couple of days through cleaning my house, I found a kitchen knife hidden under her side of the bed.”
The petition was granted, and extended a number of times, but was terminated later that year.