Updated Monday, Jan. 26, 9:44 a.m.
A Springfield Gardens man inexplicably massacred his own family early Saturday morning when he methodically shot his two daughters, their mother and their grandmother, leaving three dead and a 12-year-old girl fighting for her life, police said.
The gunman, Jonathan Walker, 34, fled the blood-splattered home he shared with his family in his GMC Arcadia, prompting an NYPD manhunt that ended five hours later when police discovered him dead behind the wheel of his vehicle, where he took his own life.
Officers found the four victims inside their home on 148th Avenue near 231st Street at about 5:40 a.m. All of them had been shot in the head, cops said. They were called to the scene by Walker’s 12-year-old daughter, who phoned 911 despite having a gunshot wound to her head, according to published reports.
Viola Warren, 62, her daughter, Shantai Hale, 31, and Hale’s daughter, 7-year-old Kayla Walker, were pronounced dead at the scene. The 12-year-old girl, Christina Walker, also Hale’s daughter, was taken to Long Island Jewish Medical Center in critical condition. She is now in a medically induced coma, reports said.
Police say that Walker, the girls’ father and Hale’s common-law husband, shot the four and then escaped their home in his car.
Sources told the New York Post that Walker believed his longtime partner had been unfaithful and shot his daughters because he didn’t want them to end up in foster care after the attack.
Walker was found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head about five hours later inside his vehicle in a wooded area just south of the Belt Parkway near the Lefferts Boulevard exit, cops said. A .45-caliber gun was recovered.
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