A Long Island man who killed four family members before killing himself in his late mother’s home was “something of a hoarder” who spent all his money on tools, authorities said Monday.
According to Nassau County Police Lt. Stephen Fitzpatrick, the mentally deranged killer, Joseph DeLucia Jr., 59, of Syosset, worked as an auto mechanic at a local car dealership and his life appeared to revolve around his work.
“He was kind of a hoarder and spent all his money on tools and stuff,” Fitzpatrick said at a news conference Monday. “His house was full of tools and stuff related to auto mechanics and he was quite a hoarder.”
But things were changing quickly for DeLucia, a former paramedic: His 95-year-old mother died last week, and the family was in the process of selling the Wyoming Court home he’d never left, Fitzpatrick said.
Police said that enraged DeLucia, who then lashed out at his three siblings and his 30-year-old niece, shooting them to death with a Mossberg shotgun in a study at his home around noon Sunday.
“He’d lived there his whole life and never lived alone,” Fitzpatrick said, “so his state of mind was clear: his world was now changing and he was panicking.”
After killing his victims, Joan Kearns, 69, of Tampa, Florida, Frank DeLucia, 64, of Durham, North Carolina, Tina Hammond, 64, of East Patchogue, and his niece, Victoria Hammond, 30, of East Patchogue, DeLucia turned the shotgun on himself to end it all.
