ORLANDO, Fla. — A man accused of killing his wife at their home near Delaney Park told police he thought his wife might have had an accident in the shower hours before he found her body.
In a recently released police interview, David Tronnes gave detectives a timeline of the day in April that Shanti Cooper-Tronnes was killed.
Tronnes was interviewed four months before being arrested in connection with his wife's murder.
"I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know what had happened," he said. "I was screaming, 'What's wrong? What's wrong?'"
Tronnes told detectives he thought his wife was going to a dentist appointment. He said he last saw her at about 9 a.m. after going for a walk and doing yard work.
He said he returned home at about 3:15 p.m.
"I could hear the water. I couldn't hear her," he said. "I knew something was wrong, and that's when I went into the bathroom."
He said one of her legs was "sticking up and out a little bit, and it's just extremely awful."
"It doesn't look natural," Tronnes said.
He said he took his wife out of the shower and performed chest compressions.
"I was just trying anything I could think (of)," Tronnes said.
He said he called 911 about five to six minutes after finding his wife.
"I was losing it," he said. "I thought I was losing her."
A medical examiner's office report said Cooper-Tronnes had trauma to her head and was strangled.
A detective asked Tronnes what he thought his wife's cause of death was. He paused and waited several seconds before answering the question.
"I think at some point she decided I'm going to take a shower, and she stepped in and turned the water on like she always does to heat it up and that's the point something went wrong," he said. "Either she slipped or she fell or she blacked out."
Later in the interview, the detective told Tronnes that evidence indicated his wife's injuries were inconsistent with those of a fall.
Police told him they believe she died before he left their home that morning.
Cox Media Group
