Police have declared the death of a 24-year-old woman on Madison’s north side a homicide, the city’s second of the year. A suspect is hospitalized after suffering burns in a car fire the day before the victim was found.
The homicide victim was identified by her grandparents as Christina Hatcher, a native of Ohio, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. Hatcher was found dead on Wednesday morning in a Calypso Road apartment after a family member asked police to check on her.
The 39-year-old suspect has been hospitalized since suffering burns in a car fire Tuesday afternoon. Police were called to assist, following reports that a vehicle was engulfed in flames near soccer fields at Reindahl Park on Portage Road around 4:20 p.m. When officers arrived at the scene the suspect was being treated by paramedics and about to be transported to a burn unit.
Police said the car belongs to the victim, his girlfriend. The two had reportedly been dating for a number of months and have been living together — a scenario Police Chief Mike Koval said is all too familiar to his officers. “It is one of those reasons that why, when we teach our officers to do extensive work on domestic violence responses, we literally look at those calls as potentially murder preventions,” Koval said.
WIBA