Avenel man is charged with double homicide Two men found shot in front seat of car in October 2003 BY PATRICIA A. MILLER Staff Writer An Avenel man was arrested and charged with the murders of two Russian men Monday, almost three years after they were found shot to death in a housing development. Michael E. Ross II, 23, Chestnut Street, was being held on $1.55 million bail with no 10 percent option in connection with the deaths of Aleksy Bautin, 26, Forest View Drive and Sergey Barbashov, 21, Edison, authorities from the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office said. Both men were found in the front seat of a red 1999 Volkswagen parked near the Forest View apartments. Each man had been shot several times, authorities said. The arrest came after witnesses' statements and a "tireless investigation" by Detective Christopher Lyons of the Woodbridge Police Department and Investigator Mark Clemens of the Prosecutor's Office. Police were dispatched to Yardley Avenue inside the apartment complex at 10:58 p.m. on October 30, 2003, after a resident called police about gunshots in the area, according to police reports. Bautin, a computer programmer for Theatre Mania in New York City, was pronounced dead at the scene, only a few hundred feet from his parents' third-floor apartment. Barbashov died at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in Newark several hours later on Oct. 31, 2003. He was employed by Olger Motors in Bridgeton. Neither of the victims' families could be reached for comment as of press time on Monday. Ross was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, one second-degree count of possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and one third-degree count of unlawful possession of a weapon, authorities said.