Investigators say two children were in the house, and the state attorney general has taken over the criminal case because the suspect is a police officer.

SANBORN, N.Y. — A Buffalo police officer was charged with second-degree murder after authorities said his wife was fatally shot inside their home Feb. 14, and investigators later said the couple’s two children were in the house when the shooting happened.

Lance Woods, 53, was arraigned Feb. 15 and ordered held in custody after investigators accused him of killing 35-year-old Alexis Skoczylas at the family’s home on Buffalo Street in Sanborn, a hamlet in the Town of Lewiston in Niagara County. The case quickly drew wider scrutiny because Woods was an active Buffalo police officer, triggering a state attorney general investigation and a separate internal review by his department into how officers handled events in the hours before his arrest.

Police say the case began as a welfare check late Saturday afternoon. Lewiston officers were dispatched at about 5:14 p.m. to the Buffalo Street home to check on a female resident. Inside, they found Skoczylas dead. Local television station WKBW reported she had a single gunshot wound to the head. By early Sunday morning, authorities had identified Woods, her husband, as the suspect. Lewiston Police Chief Michael Salada said Woods was detained during a traffic stop by Amherst police between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. Sunday. New York Attorney General Letitia James said in announcing the charge that Woods was off duty and allegedly shot his wife while at home with his family. Woods was arraigned later that day before Town of Somerset Justice of the Peace Pamela Rider and remanded to custody.

The criminal accusation is straightforward and severe. A felony complaint filed in Niagara County alleges Woods intentionally caused Skoczylas’ death by shooting her with a firearm on or about Feb. 14 at 5781 Buffalo St. and charges him with murder in the second degree under New York Penal Law. Officials have not publicly described a detailed motive in court papers. But local reporting added family context that investigators are likely to examine closely: court records showed Skoczylas filed for a contested divorce in September 2025, about five months before her death. Salada also said there had been no previous domestic violence calls to the home, a fact that left key questions unresolved about whether there had been earlier warning signs outside police records. Authorities have not publicly said whether Woods has entered a plea beyond the initial arraignment stage, and no defense account of the shooting was immediately available in the records released so far.

Several parts of the case have added to public attention in western New York. Woods had been with the Buffalo Police Department since January 2008, according to statements from the department carried by local media. At the time of his arrest, officials said, he held the rank of police officer and was working as an active school resource officer who answered calls at schools across the city rather than serving at one campus. Buffalo police said his last shift before the shooting ended at 4 p.m. Friday. The department also said investigators learned Woods used a personally registered firearm, not his city-issued weapon, and that he was not driving a city vehicle when he was arrested. Those details do not change the homicide charge, but they shape the internal review because supervisors are now examining what department resources were used, what information was shared across agencies and whether policy was followed once Buffalo police learned one of their officers was tied to a killing in Niagara County.

The children’s presence in the house has made the case especially disturbing. Salada said two children were home at the time of the shooting and were later placed in the care of relatives. Authorities have not released their ages, and they have not said whether the children witnessed the shooting or were elsewhere in the home when it happened. They also have not publicly described who first raised concern about Skoczylas’ safety. A later timeline released by Buffalo police and reported by local outlets showed Skoczylas’ mother called Buffalo police at about 4:30 p.m. Saturday asking for help reaching Woods because she did not have his phone number. That timeline said a captain was alerted minutes later and that the mother was told Skoczylas would call back within an hour. The same timeline, as reported by Investigative Post and television stations in Buffalo, later placed Woods at a Buffalo police station around 7:52 p.m. Saturday with the children before he left again shortly after 8 p.m. The records released publicly do not answer why Skoczylas was already dead by then or what officers knew at each step.

That sequence has opened a second track of fallout beyond the murder prosecution. Buffalo police said their Internal Affairs Division was reviewing the timeline of events in what the department first called a rapidly evolving situation. Within days, city officials said Woods had been suspended without pay, effective Feb. 16, and that a Buffalo police captain had been suspended with pay pending internal review. Investigative Post reported the captain had met with Woods in person at a district station after the first family concerns reached Buffalo police and before Woods was arrested as a homicide suspect. The department later said it was conducting a comprehensive internal investigation into whether policies, procedures and professional standards were followed by personnel involved in the matter. That review could become a significant side story, because it focuses not on what happened inside the Sanborn home, but on whether one police agency responded properly when it learned that one of its own officers might be tied to a fatal crime in another jurisdiction.

Under New York law, the criminal investigation moved quickly to the state attorney general’s Office of Special Investigation, known as OSI. That office reviews any case in which a police or peace officer may have caused a person’s death, whether the officer was on duty or off duty. James said OSI’s assessment in this case led to a full investigation and the filing of the murder charge. The attorney general’s office thanked Lewiston police, the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office, Niagara Falls police and the Niagara County District Attorney’s Office for assisting. For now, the public record remains limited to the charge, the brief allegations in the complaint and the statements released by police and prosecutors. Investigators have not publicly outlined ballistics evidence, forensic findings from the house, interview summaries or whether additional charges could follow. They also have not said when evidence will be presented to a grand jury, whether prosecutors will seek an indictment in the coming weeks or when Woods will next appear in court. Those steps typically shape how quickly a homicide case moves from arrest to formal prosecution.

The scene described by officials was outwardly ordinary: a family home on Buffalo Street in Sanborn, a small Niagara County community where violent crime of this kind draws immediate notice. Yet the voices around the case have reflected layers of grief, alarm and institutional concern. Salada said only that Woods and Skoczylas were married and that the children were safe with relatives. James kept her statement brief, saying Woods had allegedly fatally shot his wife. Buffalo police, in their own statement, said detectives shared resources with Lewiston police to support the apprehension of Woods and were continuing to cooperate with OSI. Even those clipped remarks carried unusual weight because they came from agencies trying to reassure the public that the homicide investigation would proceed outside Woods’ own department. At the same time, the sparse official language left many of the human details unfinished: who called first, what the children experienced, what family members noticed that day and whether more warning signs will surface as records and testimony emerge.

The case now stands at an early but intense stage: Woods is jailed on a second-degree murder charge, the attorney general’s office is leading the homicide investigation and Buffalo police are under pressure to explain their own timeline. The next major milestone is a further court proceeding or grand jury action, which authorities had not publicly dated as of March 16, 2026.