New photos show a gruesome scene at a Long Island house of horrors where five members of the same family were killed in a murder-suicide, with neighbors saying one of the victims had been celebrating his birthday on the day he was killed.
Images taken Tuesday morning showed the back den where police say a crazed man, Joseph DeLucia, murdered three siblings and a niece with a shotgun in a rage over plans to sell his late mother's home on Wyoming Court in Syosset.
The wood-paneled room is filled with period furniture and items, including wooden captain's chairs, stacks of newspapers and magazines, a wooden table with a vinyl tablecloth, a crocheted throw, and a well-worn sofa.
A cup of iced coffee was still on the living room side table, and police said the family had stopped at a Starbucks to buy a drink before meeting with a local real estate agent to discuss the sale of 95-year-old matriarch Teresa DeLucia's small North Shore home.
The only trace of the tragedy were two crumpled, bloody white sheets lying one on top of the other on the floor directly beneath the table.
It's unclear how they got there or whether they were used to clean up blood from the four victims before DeLucia ran outside and turned the shotgun on himself. Police found DeLucia dead on the lawn just before noon Sunday.
Balloons could be seen floating in the corner of the room. A neighbor who gave her name as Randy said the family had been planning to celebrate victim Tina Hammond's birthday on Sunday.
A neighbour said she was very close friends with Tina, 64, and that she had turned up at her mother's house with her 30-year-old daughter, Victoria Hammond.
“I got to know her because I was helping her mother, and even though she was elderly and couldn't take care of herself, we became best friends,” Randy said, describing Tina, who lived with her daughter in East Patchogue, as “a nice person and always upbeat.”
Neighbors were also heading over to their homes to celebrate, but felt the urge to wait a bit and went to buy food for the party instead.
That decision may have saved her life.
“First I went to get food and when I came back the police were here. If I hadn't gone to get food I would have been in the house and I could have died,” the shocked woman said. “There is a God.”
Around noon on Sunday, the gathering turned into a dizzying, bloody massacre when DeLucia, a 59-year-old mechanic, shot and killed his niece, Victoria, her mother, and two siblings, Joan Kearns, 69, of Tampa, Florida, and Frank DeLucia, 63, of Durham, North Carolina.
Authorities say DeLucia, a former paramedic, had a history of mental illness and could not comprehend having to leave the home she had lived in all her life after her mother died Aug. 19 and her siblings were planning to sell the house.
Tina Hammond's boss said Tuesday that she is simply “an exceptional type of person.”
“She had a bubbly personality and was just nice and friendly with everybody,” said Steve Huey, 64, manager of Junta's Meat Farms supermarket in Bohemia. “Everybody here is still in shock. This whole situation just doesn't seem real.”
Huey said her mother recently became seriously ill and the East Patchogue resident often had to interrupt her work shift to make calls to doctors and nurses.
She started working as a cashier about a year and a half ago, he said, and he was immediately impressed with her work ethic.
“She was second to none,” he said. “She showed up early and did everything she could to help people.”
“She always had a smile on her face and always had something nice to say,” he continued. “She never complained about anything. For someone who makes a living dealing with the public, that's a miracle! Very, very rare! It really says a lot about the kind of person she was.”
He also said she loved her daughter, Victoria, with whom she lived and who often came to the store, he said with a smile.
“They were twins and inseparable,” Huey said. “They were always together and just really good people.
“She was a great all-around talent and she's gone too soon,” the manager added.
“No one would have ever imagined something like this could happen. It doesn't seem real. How can this be true? Everybody here is in shock. We'll never recover from this.”
