Again, batteries linked to disaster
Couple found dead, suspect murder-suicide
A 38-year-old Queens man shot his girlfriend in the head, then took his own life in an apparent murder-suicide, police said Saturday.
Cops responding to a 911 call of a shooting at a home on 143rd St. near Glassboro Ave. in Jamaica about 2:45 p.m. on Friday found Joseph Murphy and 35-year-old Kenisha Mirrison dead inside, cops said.
Both had been shot in the head.
A handgun was found next to Murphy’s body, leading police to believe that he had shot Mirrison before killing himself.
Cops are investigating the deaths as a murder-suicide, but were awaiting the results of an autopsy before moving forward, a police source with knowledge of the case said.
The shooting apparently ended ongoing domestic strife between the couple, the source said, although it was not immediately clear if cops had ever been called to their home to stop a fight between the two before.
Murphy and Mirrison had moved into the second-floor apartment in the two-family home (photo) about five months ago with two other women, their landlord told the Daily News on Saturday. “They both worked very long hours,” the landlord, who wished not to be named, said. “He was calm. We never would have expected anything to have come from them, that’s the thing.”
The couple, from the Caribbean, “worked in restaurants,” the landlord said. The two women who lived with them were Murphy’s nieces, she believed.
“They’re a very hardworking family. They worked a lot to be able to rent here,” the landlord said. “They just wanted to make a life for themselves here.”
The landlord didn’t know if the couple had argued frequently.
“We didn’t hear any arguing because we also work a lot, too,” she said.
A neighbor, who would identify herself only as Mrs. Williams, described the couple as “friendly people.”
“It’s very sad,” she said about their deaths. Murphy’s nieces declined to speak to The News when reached Saturday.
This is the third time in three months that a romantic relationship ended in a murder-suicide across the five boroughs.
On Feb. 16, Luz Maribel Espinal, 43, was shot to death by her new boyfriend in her apartment on Logan St. near Etna St. in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, before he turned the gun on himself, cops said.
In January, Jason Jackson and his girlfriend, Olga Kirshenbaum, both 34, were found dead in their apartment on Second St. near Fifth Ave. in Park Slope, Brooklyn, cops said.
Both had been shot in the head, cops said. A handgun was found next to Jackson’s body, leading police to believe that he shot Kirshenbaum, then took his own life.