New details emerged Monday about the victims of the grisly Long Island murder-suicide, including how a “bubbly” local mom was killed alongside her daughter by their unhinged 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” before their untimely deaths on Sunday, their landlord said.
“It’s a tragedy — just a tragedy,” the landlord, Marion Powell, told The Post about the deaths of the mom and daughter at the hands of Tina’s brother, Joseph DeLucia Jr., who cops say gunned them down in Syosset after a dispute about his late mother’s estate.
“It was odd when I was leaving for work this morning and her car wasn’t there. I never thought in a million years something like this would happen,” Powell said.
She described Tina as a “very bubbly” woman whose daughter was always attached to her at the hip.
“Victoria would follow her — like, if her mom was doing 100 mph down the driveway and stopped, Victoria would just bump into her cause she was always right there,” Powell said. “They were inseparable.
“They were just nice people,” she continued. “Nobody deserves that.”
Tina worked at a meat market in nearby Bohemia, and had been living at the East Patchogue home with Victoria for about a year-and-a-half, the landlord said.
Tina had told Powell that she and her daughter were going to meet her siblings and a realtor to discuss selling her late mom’s house, which was headed to the market after the 95-year-old Theresa DeLucia’s Aug. 19 death.
But what should have been a quiet family meeting at the Wyoming Court home turned into a dizzying bloodbath after Tina’s youngest brother, a 59-year-old mechanic, turned a shotgun on his three siblings and his niece and left their corpses in the house’s den.
Then he walked outside — screaming incoherently, neighbors said — and turned the barrel on himself.
The other two siblings to die 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 who was previously the CFO at Prothya Biosolutions, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Kearns was the grandmother to a young 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 taken down.
Cops said Joseph DeLucia had a history of mental illness and could not comprehend that he’d have to leave the home he’d lived in his entire life because his family wanted to sell it.
“It’s horrible,” Powell said. “Just something you don’t fathom could happen.”
