In 'Creepy' Disney Town, Two Violent Deaths in Week

Murder over the holiday followed by standoff, suicide in Celebration
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 3, 2010 9:33 AM CST
In 'Creepy' Disney Town, Two Violent Deaths in Week
This photo taken Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2010, shows a reward sign near the entrance to a condominium in Celebration, Fla. Police are investigating the first ever murder in the Disney-developed community.   (AP Photo/John Raoux)

Celebration, Fla., a Disney-designed subdivision, has been relatively crime-free for 14 years—but this past week, two violent deaths marred the peaceful facade of a town that decorates with fake snow every holiday season. Yesterday, the town square—the scene of (yes, really) horse-and-carriage rides—featured a locked-down schoolhouse, and several blocks of the white-fenced homes were barricaded as police engaged in a standoff with an armed 52-year-old man who shot at them several times, and whom they found dead early today of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Craig Foushee, 52, was reportedly involved in a domestic dispute. His suicide came on the heels of a murder over Thanksgiving weekend, but authorities say there is no connection, the AP reports. Matteo Patrick Giovanditto, 58, the town's first murder victim, was found dead in his condo after the holiday, covered with a blanket. Now Celebration, just 10 minutes from Disney World, is "like Manhattan!" one resident tells the New York Times. But non-residents say the town was already "creepy," says one. "I call it the Stepford Wives community."
(More Celebration, Florida stories.)

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