A police sergeant, his wife and their two sons – ages 10 and 12 – were found dead in a suburban home in New York in what police said was a triple murder-suicide.

Watson Morgan, 49, a sergeant with the Bronxville police department, fatally shot his wife, Ornela Morgan, 43, and their sons before dying by suicide, police said. They were discovered just past midnight Saturday at the family’s home in Clarkstown – 18 miles north of Manhattan – after Morgan failed to show up for work at the police department in nearby Bronxville.

“At this phase in the investigation, it is believed that Watson killed his wife and two children, prior to killing himself with a self-inflicted gunshot wound,” the Clarkstown police department said in a statement.

All four members of the family had gunshot wounds, police said, and all were pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators recovered a handgun at the home.

Though police described Morgan’s killing of his wife and their children as a murder-suicide, such crimes since the 1980s have been known as Family Annihilations.

Communities often view such crimes as isolated tragedies, especially in the US. But an Indianapolis Star investigation found there had been an average of one Family Annihilation in the US every five days since 2020.

  • kandoh@reddthat.com
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    11 months ago

    When I was a kid, I’d hear the older women in my family says ‘It takes a special woman to marry a cop’.

    When I asked why they said it was because you never knew if they were coming home that day.

    Different era.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Construction workers are more likely to get killed on the job. Also far less likely to arrest a black guy for the crime of walking.

      Might respect them more if they stopped giving out “friend of the police force” cards.

    • prole@sh.itjust.works
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      11 months ago

      The real reason is because you’re almost guaranteed to become a domestic violence statistic.