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Mother and daughter found dead inside their Fort Lauderdale apartment.
The law enforcement officials from Fort Lauderdale, Florida are investigating a murder-suicide case involving an ex-Marine and her 9-year-old daughter. The woman and her daughter were found dead in their Fort Lauderdale home by a family member on Tuesday morning, at around 5:30 am.
Fort Lauderdale investigators are trying to understand the facts that led to the death of a woman and her 9-year-old daughter. On Tuesday morning, at around 5:30 am a family member visiting the house of Ericka and Akili Joseph, discovered their lifeless bodies lying on the floor and immediately called the authorities.
Investigators who arrived at the scene declared that the woman shot her 9-years-old daughter, before committing suicide. At this time, the evidence points out towards murder-suicide, but the authorities did not rule out homicide.
Later that day, the authorities notified Tony Williams, the woman’s brother, about her sister’s and nephew’s deaths. Williams declared that he is deeply saddened by this turn of events and that he couldn’t find any justification for this tragedy.
The man declared that although his sister was part of the US Marine Corps, she did not exhibit any unusual behavior. Ericka Joseph was divorced but had a good relationship with her ex-husband, who was also a Marine.
The person who made the gruesome discovery was none other than the woman’s ex-husband, Akili’s biological father. He was on his way to take Akili to the airport for their planned trip to Bogota.
Kevin Dupre, a police investigator from Fort Lauderdale in charge of Joseph’s case, declared that the woman was behaving strangely during the night she committed the deed. According to Joseph’s neighbors, sometime during the evening, the woman started unrolling the hurricane shutters.
This was the last time the woman and her nine-year-old daughter were seen alive by their neighbors. Baffling enough, even though two shots were fired in Joseph’s Fort Lauderdale home, no one heard anything.
At the moment, all evidence gathered from the scene would indicate the following scenario – Joseph came home late on Monday evening and started to unroll the shutter. Early in the morning, she loaded her gun’s chamber, fired one shot which killed instantly killed Akili, and then fired another, with a gun pointed at her head.
However, the Fort Lauderdale investigators are not ready to rule out the hypothesis of the mother and daughter being murdered by another person.
Image source: PublicDomainPictures
