Chilling New Details Released About Fatal North Attleboro Shooting

The shooter and the victim had worked together at a car dealership in Rhode Island and had previously been involved in a relationship

Authorities released chilling new details Monday about the fatal shooting of a 37-year-old woman in the parking lot of a shopping plaza in North Attleboro, Massachusetts over the weekend.

Steven Fregeolle, 32, was found dead in a nature preserve in Rhode Island on Sunday night in an apparent suicide, police said.

He was wanted for fatally shooting Brandi Berg, of Riverside, Rhode Island, in the parking lot of the Fashion Crossing Plaza on Route 1 around 6 p.m. on Saturday.

Fregeolle and Berg had worked together at a car dealership in Warwick, Rhode Island, and had previously been involved in a relationship, the Bristol District Attorney's Office said Monday.

Just prior to Saturday's shooting, investigators said Berg had texted her current boyfriend saying that Fregeolle was in the mall parking lot and had confronted her about seeing someone else.

Fregeolle had recently been messaging Berg frequently and was displaying "obsessive behavior" toward her, prosecutors said. He had allegedly been contacting her friends and family to learn of her whereabouts and sent several desperate text messages to her.

Witnesses told police that around 6:17 p.m. Saturday, Fregeolle approached Berg's vehicle while aiming a handgun and fired multiple shots through the windshield of her SUV. She was taken to Rhode Island Hospital, where she was pronounced dead of multiple gunshot wounds shortly after 7 p.m.

An off-duty state police trooper and an off-duty Bridgewater police officer were in the area at the time of the shooting and were able to follow Fregeolle's vehicle as he fled. They told responding officers that he was driving a blue Subaru and also provided the license plate. A subsequent check of the plate revealed that the vehicle was registered to Fregeolle.

A warrant for Fregeolle's arrest, charging him with murder, was issued around 4 a.m. Sunday. Around noon Sunday, police located his vehicle abandoned in a parking lot at the Francis C. Carter Memorial Preserve in Charlestown, Rhode Island. His keys, cell phone, identification and credit cards were found inside.

Law enforcement from around the region searched the nature preserve for several hours before finding Fregeolle in the woods, dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. A black handgun was found next to his body.

An autopsy in Rhode Island is still pending.

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