Authorities say a Moore County man fled toward Ohio after two people were found shot to death inside a Vass home.
VASS, N.C. — A 25-year-old man is charged with killing his former girlfriend and her new boyfriend in a Valentine’s Day shooting at a home in Moore County, authorities said, in a case that ended with his arrest hours later in Ohio after a multiagency search.
Investigators say the two victims, 21-year-old Kateryna Tovmash and 28-year-old Matthew Wade, were found dead inside Tovmash’s home in the Woodlake community near Vass after deputies responded around 7:45 a.m. Feb. 14. Sheriff’s officials identified Caleb Hayden Fosnaugh, Tovmash’s former boyfriend from Ohio, as the suspect the same day. The killings drew attention across central North Carolina because Wade was an active-duty soldier stationed at Fort Bragg and Tovmash was a young Ukrainian refugee whose family had rebuilt part of its life in the United States after fleeing war.
According to the Moore County Sheriff’s Office, deputies were called to the home on Daphne Lane on the morning of Feb. 14 after a report of a shooting. When they arrived, they found a man and a woman dead inside. By Saturday afternoon, investigators had named Fosnaugh as the suspect and told other agencies to watch for him as they worked to track his movements out of North Carolina. Authorities later said they believed everyone involved knew each other and described the case as an isolated incident, not a continuing threat to neighbors in the gated Woodlake community. Sheriff Ronnie Fields called the killings “a tragic and senseless loss of life,” and said local and out-of-state officers moved quickly once Fosnaugh was identified. The sheriff’s office said Fosnaugh and Tovmash had previously been in a relationship while both lived in Ohio, but early in the investigation it did not announce a motive beyond that history.
By the next day, deputies publicly identified the victims as Tovmash, of Vass, and Wade, of Hamilton, Mississippi. Officials said Wade was stationed at Fort Bragg. Family members told local television outlets that Wade and Tovmash had recently become a couple and were living together while he served in North Carolina. Megan Wade, his sister, said he had long wanted to join the military and had been looking ahead to an overseas assignment later this year. Another sister, Courtney Miller, said he was known in the family for his humor and for making people laugh. Friends and relatives of Tovmash described a far newer life taking shape in North Carolina. Local reporting and family fundraising pages said she had come to the United States after leaving Ukraine and had been helping care for younger siblings. Authorities have not publicly confirmed every family account about who else may have been inside the house during the shooting, and investigators have not released a fuller narrative describing how the confrontation began or how long Fosnaugh may have been at the home before the gunfire.
The manhunt ended about seven hours from the crime scene, in Coshocton County, Ohio. The Coshocton County Sheriff’s Office said its deputies were alerted by investigators in North Carolina to watch for Fosnaugh, who was believed to be driving back toward his home area in a white 2018 Ford Mustang. Ohio authorities said he was stopped at the intersection of State Route 541 and County Road 120 in Linton Township and taken into custody without the kind of public standoff that often follows interstate homicide investigations. The Moore County sheriff said the Ohio arrest was the result of coordination among the Coshocton County Sheriff’s Office, the Ohio State Highway Patrol, the North Carolina State Highway Patrol and the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. The quick arrest answered one immediate question for investigators, but left several others unresolved. Authorities have not publicly detailed the weapon used, whether there were any prior calls for service involving the people in the case, or whether any protective orders, warning signs or threats were documented before Feb. 14.
For people in the Sandhills region, the case cut across several familiar lines at once: domestic violence, military life and the long shadow of the war in Ukraine. Woodlake, where the shooting happened, is a residential community in the Vass area of Moore County, a largely rural county southwest of Raleigh. Fort Bragg, one of the nation’s largest military installations, anchors the broader region and ties many local families to the Army. Tovmash’s death also drew grief from people who knew her as part of the Ukrainian community that has grown in different pockets of the United States since Russia’s full-scale invasion. A fundraiser created after the killings said donations would go to funeral and transportation costs for her family and later said those needs had been met, with funds to be turned over to her mother, Olena Brown. Obituary and community notices remembered Tovmash as “Kate,” a young woman whose life had stretched between Ukraine and the American South and West. The public record so far, however, still leaves unanswered how long she and Fosnaugh had been apart and what contact, if any, they had in the days before the killings.
The case moved quickly into the court system after Fosnaugh was returned to North Carolina. ABC11 reported that he waived extradition in Ohio and was brought back to Moore County by Feb. 18. He has been formally charged with two counts of murder and one count of felony breaking and entering. At his first appearance in Moore County court, a judge assigned him a capital defender and ordered that he be held without bond. Jail records and local news reports said he was being held at the Moore County Detention Center. His next court date was set for March 11. Prosecutors have not publicly laid out whether they intend to seek additional charges, and authorities have not announced whether any grand jury action has occurred beyond the initial charging stage. Investigators also have said little about what evidence they expect to rely on most heavily, whether from physical evidence at the scene, electronic records, witness statements, surveillance footage or travel records tracing Fosnaugh’s route from North Carolina into Ohio.
Outside the formal court file, the story has been told in quieter pieces by the people left behind. Wade’s family spoke about a young soldier who had reached one of his biggest goals by serving in the Army. Friends of Tovmash spoke about a refugee who had survived one upheaval only to be killed after starting over. One friend told television reporters that they had grown up together in Ukraine before building new lives in the United States. Those public memories, together with the sparse statements from investigators, have given the case an emotional weight beyond the basic charge sheet. In Moore County, the image that remains is stark: a house in a calm neighborhood turned into a homicide scene on a holiday morning, then a suspect moving north as officers from two states tried to cut him off before he could disappear. The criminal case is still at an early stage, and many of the details that often explain motive, planning and final moments have yet to emerge in open court.
The case now stands with Fosnaugh jailed in Moore County on murder and breaking-and-entering charges. The next public milestone is his March 11 court date, when the prosecution and defense are expected to address the status of the case and any next procedural steps.