Man shoots woman to death in hospital, then kills self

VALHALLA, N.Y. — A man who said he wanted to end his ailing wife’s suffering shot her to death in her bed at a suburban New York hospital Wednesday and then killed himself, police said.

Richard DeLucia, 71, left a note at the couple’s condo indicating he was distraught about how his wife, Ann, 70, was suffering and wanted to put a stop to her ordeal, Westchester County police spokesman Kieran O’Leary said.

Then the husband went to his wife’s room at Westchester Medical Center with a licensed .38-caliber revolver, fired a single shot that killed his wife and then took his own life with another shot, police said. No one else was in the room at the time, authorities said.

Ann DeLucia, whose medical condition wasn’t immediately revealed, was found in her bed and her husband was found on the floor of her fourth-floor room at the Valhalla hospital, about 35 miles north of Manhattan, police said.

Richard DeLucia had once owned a well-known Westchester catering hall, the Westchester Manor, called the Manor House during his time, current co-owner Enrico Mareschi said. Although DeLucia sold the venue to another owner roughly 15 years ago, he still came by occasionally until two to three years ago, Mareschi said.

“He was a nice guy,” Mareschi said. “He really was a good person.”

At the couple’s condo building in Yorktown Heights, neighbors absorbed the news with dismay.

“Everybody’s just shocked,” resident Valeria Tassone said, adding that she had no insight into what was going on in the couple’s life.

The gunfire prompted a brief lockdown of a major suburban medical center that cares for tens of thousands of people per year. Jatziri Escobar, a patient who arrived at the hospital shortly after 9 a.m., told The Journal News she was in a first-floor room when staffers ran through the building, alerting patients about the active shooting.