Four members of a family, including two children, were stabbed to death in their Queens home this Sunday morning local time, according to the NYPD. The alleged perpetrator then set fire to the house and also wounded two uniformed officers who arrived at the scene with a knife, before being fatally shot.
The event occurred, it was revealed, around five in the morning, when the police received an emergency call from a young woman. She informed them that a cousin of hers was killing people in her family, department head Jeffrey Maddrey reported at a morning press conference.
Two officers responded to the call in the Far Rockaway neighborhood and saw a man leaving the scene carrying a suitcase. When they stopped him, the individual stabbed one of the police officers in the head and the other in the neck. He used a butcher knife. The agents shot him down, Maddrey stressed.
The alleged perpetrator of the massacre was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The injuries of the uniformed men did not pose a danger to their lives, the police chief insisted. They identified him as Courtney Gordon, 38, who lived in the Bronx and had gone to Queens to visit family. The motive was not clear and the woman who made the call was being questioned to try to clarify the matter.
Once more patrol officers arrived, in the house they found the lifeless body of an eleven-year-old girl, who was lying right at the entrance of the house. Although she tried to set the home on fire, officers gained access before firefighters extinguished the fire.
They found three other victims in two back rooms. There they found a 12-year-old boy, a 44-year-old woman and a man in his 30s. All of them had been fatally stabbed.
They also found a 61-year-old woman, who was stabbed multiple times, but was taken to the hospital, where she was in serious condition. It is not clear whether in all cases she used the same knife.
