Sarah moved out of the family home and filed a protective order against her estranged husband, alleging that Josh had engaged in extreme cruelty and had caused her to crash her car into a tree as the two fought for possession of her cell phone.
[4] The home Sarah shared with Howell was broken into earlier in the same month of the shooting, with her safe, computers and gun being stolen.
[4] In the early morning hours of August 24, 2018, Sarah Federico was shot multiple times, critically wounding her and her unborn child.
[1] At trial, Sarah testified that Josh, from whom she had been separated for several months, fatally shot Howell after he took their dogs outside early on the morning of the shooting.
Frightened by the gunfire but still not clear as to what was happening, Sarah witnessed Howell stumbling inside the house and collapsing behind the living room couch.
Sarah testified that her husband then directed her into the hallway, saying “he was going to make it look like Larry and I were fighting.” Wounded, she went out on the front porch with Josh following.
At one point, Josh directed Sarah to scratch her dead boyfriend’s face to make it appear they had been fighting, then had her fire a gun with her left hand into some paper towels; she was right-handed and had been shot in the right arm.
Josh Federico then went upstairs for a time; when he returned he calmly dragged Howell’s body out the garage door with a tarp and put him in Sarah's GMC Yukon.
After hearing him walk toward the garage, Sarah Federico said she got up and took off running through a patch of woods and briars to the home of her nearest neighbors, Richard and Patricia Brigman.
[2] Howell’s remains were found days later in a burn pit on Federico’s farm where a prosecutor said he used tires to basically “cremate” the body.
[12] Joshua Federico was found hiding in an abandoned home and arrested and charged with first-degree murder, malicious wounding and use of a firearm in commission of a felony.
[13][14] Federico's son, Hunter, was arrested after police found guns and illegal drugs in his home after a manhunt related search.
She had been held in the medical tier of Riverside Regional Jail throughout her 16 months of incarceration, but was transferred April 15 to a Hopewell hospital, where she died, due to complications that arose from her regularly scheduled chemotherapy treatments.