New details emerged Monday about the victims of a grisly murder and suicide on Long Island, including reports that a “fun-loving” local mother and her daughter were killed by a crazed relative.
Tina Hammond, 64, and her 30-year-old daughter Victoria shared a home in the South Shore town of East Patchogue and were absolutely “inseparable” until her untimely death on Sunday, her landlord said.
“It's a tragedy – just a tragedy,” landlady Marion Powell told the Washington Post about the deaths of mother and daughter at the hands of Tina's brother Joseph DeLucia Jr., who, according to Syosset police, shot them after a dispute over his late mother's estate.
“It was strange when I went to work this morning and her car wasn't there. I never in my life thought something like this would happen,” Powell said.
She described Tina as a “very lively” woman whose daughter was always inseparable from her.
“Victoria would follow her – for example, when her mother would be speeding down the driveway at 100 miles an hour and would stop, Victoria would just bump into her because she was always right there,” Powell said. “They were inseparable.”
“They were just nice people,” she continued. “Nobody deserved this.”
Tina worked at a meat market in nearby Bohemia and had lived with Victoria in the East Patchogue house for about a year and a half, the landlord said.
Tina had told Powell that she and her daughter wanted to meet her siblings and a real estate agent to discuss the sale of her late mother's home, which was set to go on the market after 95-year-old Theresa DeLucia died on August 19.
But what should have been a quiet family gathering at the Wyoming Court family home turned into a dizzying bloodbath after Tina's youngest brother, a 59-year-old mechanic, pointed a shotgun at his three siblings and niece and left their bodies in the house's study.
He then went outside – screaming incomprehensible noises, neighbors reported – and turned the barrel on himself.
The other two siblings who died in the hail of lead were identified as Joanne Kearns, 69, of Tampa, Florida, and Frank DeLucia, 63, of Durham, North Carolina.
Frank DeLucia worked as a freelance strategic financial officer and was previously CFO at Prothya Biosolutions, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Kearns was the grandmother of a little girl, Ella Kathleen, who was born in 2019 to Kearns' son Ryan and his wife Kaylee, according to her Facebook profile – which has since been deleted.
According to police, Joseph DeLucia suffered from mental illness and could not understand why he had to leave the house he had lived in all his life because his family wanted to sell it.
“It's terrible,” Powell said. “You just can't imagine that something like this could happen.”