Police and neighbors say a man shot and killed his two young children before turning the gun on himself in their Orange County home.
The man's wife returned home in Wallkill just before 5:30 p.m. to find her husband and their two children dead in their beds, authorities and neighbors said. Each had been shot in the head.
Neighbor Jean Stevens, who lives across the street, said she heard the wife screaming as she was on the phone with police outside the home.
"I ran across the street and said, 'What's going on?' She said, 'He killed them, he killed them, he killed himself," said Stevens. "She was hysterical, she was screaming, she was yelling."
"She told me she had tried calling him all day, she couldn't get through," Stevens said. "She felt there was something wrong, so when she got home, she tried to get into the house and the door was locked. She tried to break in, and when she got in the house, she found them."
The ages of the children were not immediately clear.
Neighbors said the man was a stay-at-home father and a retired police officer. The family was "very quiet" and kept to themselves.
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"We never saw them," said Stevens. "You'd never know there were kids in the house. They were never outside the house, you never saw them. They would come home and the kids would be snuck in the back door."
Mary Bertone said the family has lived there for over 20 years and that the father, while friendly enough to offer a wave and say hello when he saw her, never engaged with neighbors.
"I've never seen anything that would indicate that was going on," she said. "They were very quiet. John was a quiet man. He was there for the children, took them to school, brought them home."
But Bertone added that the children were never outside.
"He would pick them up from school, they'd come home and that was it, they'd stay indoors," she said. "Their blinds were never open in the house. That's just the way John was. What was going on behind closed doors, I don't think anyone will ever know."
She said his wife was "very pleasant, very quiet."
"Everybody is shocked that this happened," she said.
Wallkill and state police are investigating.
