SHOKAN — Police say a man found dead near a generator in his closed garage was apparently killed by carbon monoxide and his wife evidently died after a fall looking for him in their Catskills Mountain home.
Ulster County Sheriff Paul Van Blarcum says the couple was found dead Monday in the hamlet of Shokan after their daughter reported she couldn’t contact them. He says she’d last talked to them more than a week earlier.
Police found 75-year-old James Stapleford in the basement-level garage where a gasoline-powered generator was attached to the electrical panel. His 73-year-old wife Eva’s body was at the bottom of stairs to the basement.
Deputies say Tuesday the neighborhood had power restored after Superstorm Sandy outages, but the Stapleford home didn’t.
Van Blarcum says autopsies will determine when the couple died.
Shokan is 50 miles south of Albany.