New pictures present the grisly scene inside a Lengthy Island home of horrors the place a murder-suicide left 5 members of the identical household lifeless — as a neighbor mentioned one of many victims was celebrating her birthday the day she was killed.
The photographs — taken Tuesday morning — captured the again den the place cops say madman Joseph DeLucia killed his three siblings and a niece with a shotgun in a match of rage over their plans to promote his late mother’s house on Wyoming Courtroom in Syosset.
The wood-paneled room is crammed with old school furnishings and gadgets, resembling picket captain’s chairs, piles of newspapers and magazines, a wooden desk lined by vinyl tablecloth, crocheted throw blankets and a well-worn sofa.
A cup of iced espresso nonetheless sat on a lounge finish desk — police mentioned the household had stopped at Starbucks to get drinks earlier than assembly with an area realtor to debate promoting 95-year-old matriarch Theresa DeLucia’s tiny North Shore home.
The one signal of the tragedy was a pair of bloodstained white sheets that lay crumpled close to one another on the ground, slightly below the desk.
It’s not clear how they received there, or whether or not they had been getting used to scrub up the blood that streamed from DeLucia’s 4 victims earlier than he ran exterior and turned the shotgun on himself, with cops discovering him lifeless on the garden simply earlier than midday on Sunday.
A balloon might be seen floating within the nook of the room — and a neighbor, who gave her title as Randi, mentioned the household supposed to rejoice sufferer Tina Hammond’s birthday on Sunday.
The neighbor mentioned that she was superb associates with the 64-year-old Tina, who confirmed up at her mother’s home along with her daughter, 30-year-old Victoria Hammond.
“I received to know her as a result of I helped her mother, she was aged and couldn’t maintain herself, we grew to become greatest associates,” Randi mentioned, describing Tina, who lived along with her daughter in East Patchogue, as “a superb individual and all the time upbeat.”
The neighbor was headed over to the home to rejoice, too, however one thing advised her to attend just a bit bit — so she went to get meals for the social gathering as an alternative.
The choice could have saved her life.
“I went to choose up the meals first, and got here again and noticed the police right here. If I didn’t choose up the meals, I’d have been in the home. And presumably be lifeless additionally,” the shocked lady mentioned. “There’s a God.”
The gathering become a dizzying massacre round midday Sunday when DeLucia, a 59-year-old mechanic, gunned down his niece Victoria and her mother, in addition to two different siblings — Joanne Kearns, 69, of Tampa, Florida, and Frank DeLucia, 63, of Durham, North Carolina.
Authorities have mentioned DeLucia — a former EMT — had a historical past of psychological sickness and couldn’t comprehend that he’d have to go away the house he’d lived in his total life as a result of his siblings had been going to promote it following their mother’s Aug. 19 loss of life.
On Tuesday, Tina Hammond’s boss mentioned she was merely an “distinctive form of individual.”
“She had a bubbly persona and was type and pleasant to everybody,” mentioned Steve Huey, the 64-year-old supervisor of Giunta’s Meat Farms Grocery store in Bohemia. “Everybody right here remains to be in shock. The entire scenario, it’s surreal.”
Huey mentioned her mother had lately turn out to be very sick , and the East Patchogue lady usually needed to interrupt her work shifts with cellphone calls to docs or nurses.
She’d begun working as a cashier a few year-and-a-half in the past, he mentioned. And he was instantly impressed along with her work ethic.
“She was second to none,” he mentioned. “She confirmed up early and went out of her method to assist individuals.”
“She all the time had a smile, she all the time had one thing good to say,” he continued. “She by no means complained about something — and once you’re coping with the general public for a residing, that’s a miracle! It’s very, very uncommon! That proper there tells you what sort of individual she was.”
He additionally mentioned she beloved her daughter, Victoria, with whom she lived. Victoria would go to the shop usually, he mentioned with a smile.
“They had been two peas in a pod, inseparable,” Huey mentioned. “They had been all the time collectively, and so they had been simply all the time very nice individuals.
“She was a superb all-around one who is taken away too quickly,” the supervisor added.
“You’d by no means assume this may occur. It’s surreal. How can it’s true? All people right here is in shock. There isn’t any getting over this.”
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