A man identified as a retired Port Authority Police Department officer allegedly shot his sister dead and wounded his senior mother, then turned the gun on himself, in an apparent Bronx murder-suicide attempt on Thursday morning.
Police sources said the carnage unfolded inside a ground-floor apartment at 2500 Johnson Ave. in Spuyten Duyvil just before 8 a.m. on Jan. 22.
Officers from the 50th Precinct rushed to the location after receiving reports that multiple people had been shot.
Upon arriving at the scene, sources said, police found the alleged shooter, a 55-year-old man, lying in the hallway with a gunshot wound to his body, and a firearm next to him. He was pronounced dead at the location.
Residents described the frantic scene.
“I looked out my window, and I saw an immersion of cars and ambulances and so forth. And then my neighbor told me that she had heard from somebody in the building that there had been a murder, and then I heard from someone else that it’s a suicide-homicide,” resident Elise Selanga said. “I’ve lived in the neighborhood about nine years. I mean, nothing. Never heard of anything happening like this in the neighborhood.”
Sources said a Port Authority Police Department ID was found near his body; it was later confirmed that he was a retired PAPD member.
Cops then went inside a nearby apartment, where they found a 59-year-old woman with a fatal gunshot wound to her head inside a bedroom. Responding EMS units pronounced her dead at the scene; sources close to the case say she was the shooter’s sister.
A resident of the building, Jane Burbank, was in shock on Thursday morning; she knew the sister, whom she identified only as Maria.
“Maria, she was wonderful. I just, it’s such a shock. I can’t believe it, she worked for New York State. She loved dancing, and she loved to eat, she loved to travel. She was looking forward to her retirement so she could travel more,” Burbank said. “She has a big family.”
Burbank said she did not know the man believed to be responsible for Maria’s death.
“I didn’t even know he existed,” she told amNewYork. “I knew what the cop told me, which is that he was, I don’t know if this is so, but she told me he was a Port Authority cop, which may account for all the police detectives around from different precincts and stuff.”
Nearby, police also found an 86-year-old woman — believed to be the mother of both the suspected shooter and his sister — shot in the face. EMS rushed her to Harlem Hospital in critical but stable condition.
Currently, sources close to the case said, the NYPD is investigating the incident as a possible murder-suicide. The probe remains ongoing.
The shooting left residents in the community stunned.
“Never could I once imagine that there would be an altercation, let alone a shooting, occur in my building, especially in spite and I will where I’ve grown up all my entire life,” said Daniel Gallant, who said he lives in the upper floors of the building where the shooting occurred. “Just to hear of something like that happening in the place that I’ve grown up all my life, it’s disturbing, honestly.”
The 50th Precinct, which includes Spuyten Duyvil and nearby Riverdale, had just one homicide in all of 2025.
This is a breaking news story; check with amNY.com for additional updates.
