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Crime & Safety

Neighbors: Vet Charged in Killing Was Quiet, Friendly

Murder accusation shocks quiet Montgomery County street where David Rapoport and wife live.

Neighbors say accused killer David Rapoport is a quiet man from a quiet street--a sharp contrast to the apparent fury that led him to shoot his pregnant girlfriend once in the back and twice in the mouth, according to police.

Rapoport's home is in the Gwynedale development in Upper Gwynedd Township, Montgomery County, where the veterinarian lived with his wife, Elizabeth, who is a teacher.

Residents were shocked to hear of their friendly neighbor’s charges of homicide in the shooting death of Lower Macungie Township vet tech Jennifer Snyder and her unborn child.

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Snyder went missing last week, just before she was scheduled to have her first ultrasound. Police found her body wrapped in a blanket, garbage bags and duct tape in the woods near where her abandoned car was discovered March 17.

Police arrested Rapoport, 30, on Tuesday, after ballistics tests matched spent shell casings in the victim's car with a pistol owned by Rapoport.

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“What can you say? Sometimes people just lose it,” said one neighbor who was working on his home.

Another neighbor said Rapoport was “a very quiet, very private person” who kept to himself. Rapoport and his wife weren’t around a lot.

“It’s terrible…it’s…it’s just awful,” said another neighbor. “They were friends of ours and we spent some time with them socially, but not a lot. To think a person could go to such an extreme, it blows my mind.”

The same neighbor said the police came to the Rapoport home last Thursday, and that was the first that Elizabeth heard of the homicide.

“The police talked to him for three hours,” said the neighbor.

No one has returned to the home since then. Neighbors speculated that Elizabeth went to stay with her parents.

“They were so private and everyone (in the neighborhood) feels so bad,” said the neighbor.

Rapoport met Snyder when the two worked at Maple Hills Veterinary Hospital in Lower Macungie Township, Lehigh County. Rapoport, a 2002 graduate of Muhlenburg College in Allentown, left the Allentown-area practice to work at a Harleysville vet center closer to his home.

Editor's Note: This article has been updated to reflect the fact that the Rapoports do not live on a cul-de-sac, as an earlier published version stated. 

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