(NECN: Amy Sinclair, Maine) - Residents of Sangerville, Maine are mourning the deaths of two well-liked neighbors.
Micheal Curtis was shot to death by state police Tuesday after police say Curtis gunned down Udo Schneider.
Neighbors say tension had been building between the two men for years.
Fifty-three-year-old Udo Schneider worked here at Hilltop Manor, a nursing facility in Dover Foxcroft for more than a decade. On Tuesday morning, police say 46-year-old Mike Curtis drove here in his pickup, asked for Schneider and shot him dead in the back parking lot.
Word of the tragedy spread quickly in the small town of Sangerville where both men lived for many years.
Toby Hill said his neighbor Udo Schneider was both kind and helpful.
"I was surprised,” said Hill. “Something like this doesn’t happen up here."
The staff at Hilltop describes Schneider as a model employee.
Mike Curtis devoted his career to helping others as a dispatcher for the Piscataquis county sheriff's department, an emt and a volunteer firefighter.
"He's an all-around nice guy,” said friend Larry Hersey. “Just didn't expect it. He snapped or something."
But Curtis and Schneider shared more than a zip code. Curtis's wife Jeannie was once married to Schneider and the couple had two children together.
Friends of both men say there was bad blood.
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“I don't want to get into a lot of details but there were family problems there and that's what led up to what happened,” said friend Orlando Gray, who served on the volunteer fire department with Curtis.
He said it's too bad his friend who helped so many people get through crises didn't get the help he needed before it was too late.
"He should have gotten help,” said Gray. “We should have helped him more, too."
Curtis, who’d been in the law enforcement community for many years, likely, knew what the outcome would be when he engaged with police in a standoff. He was shot and killed by a trooper less than an hour after he took Schneider’s life.
