Wife charged with killing retired Trenton officer found dead

TRENTON  — A woman charged with killing her husband as he lay in a Florida hospital bed last year was found dead at her home last week, police said.

Jan Sochalski faced a murder charge for allegedly suffocating her husband last May after he suffered life-threatening complications following back surgery. Sixty-four-year-old Henry Sochalski was a retired Trenton, New Jersey, police officer. The couple lived in Florida.

The Flagler County Sheriff's Office told The Daytona Beach News-Journal that Jan Sochalski was found dead at her home in Palm Coast on Thursday. A deputy who had been dispatched for a wellness check found the 62-year-old woman slumped over a chair on the back porch.

Sochalski was a retired nurse.

Police told the newspaper they don't believe her death was suspicious.

Investigators wrote in an arrest report last year that after Henry Sochalski went into respiratory and cardiac arrest after his surgery, his wife was so upset that she threatened to go home and get a gun and shoot people in the hospital. Jan Sochalski wasn't arrested at that time.

According to the arrest report after Henry Sochalski's death, a nurse found Jan Sochalski lying across her husband's chest May 19 with one hand across his mouth and nose. Henry Sochalski died about 30 minutes later. An autopsy determined he died of asphyxia of the mouth, nose and trachea.

After her arrest, she denied killing her husband, the newspaper reported.
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