To those on the outside, the couple seemed content, spending time together on a quiet block in Brooklyn, working at solid city-paid jobs and delighting in their infant son.
Almost certainly there was nothing so outwardly amiss between them that it could have foretold the crime that unfolded on Monday morning inside the woman’s apartment on East 56th Street, in the Flatlands neighborhood.
Investigators said the woman, an off-duty police officer identified by family and friends as
Rosette M. Samuel, fatally shot her boyfriend and their 1-year-old son before killing herself, the police said.
The officer’s 19-year-old son escaped; he fled through a bedroom window after hearing gunshots, said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman.
The son, who had been asleep in a rear bedroom, called 911 around 8:30 a.m. and met responding officers in front of the house, where the family rented a first-floor apartment, Mr. Browne said.
The bodies of the officer and baby were found, face up, on a bed; a crib sat near the bed against a bedroom wall, Mr. Browne said. Officers discovered the body of the child’s father lying just inside the home’s entrance, in the front hallway.
“It was a tough crime scene,” Mr. Browne said.
The boyfriend, identified by relatives as 33-year-old
Dason Peters, lived nearby and had planned to take his son, Dylan, swimming at an indoor pool near their home later that day. It was a regular father-son outing, according to a man who identified himself as a cousin and co-worker of Mr. Peters.
“Every Monday morning, they swim,” said the cousin, who declined to give his name. The cousin and Mr. Peters worked together at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, where Mr. Peters was a track maintenance supervisor.
The cousin added that Mr. Peters, a native of Guyana, was “all excited” about becoming a father after he learned that his girlfriend was pregnant.
When asked if Mr. Peters and his girlfriend had problems, the cousin responded, “Never,” an observation echoed by others.
“I never heard them have an argument,” said Agnes Samuel, 83, who lives next door and is an aunt of Officer Samuel.
Officer Samuel, 43, who joined the police force in September 2000, was most recently assigned to the 108th Precinct in Queens. There was nothing in the officer’s departmental record to indicate that she was troubled, according to Mr. Browne.
As investigators removed the plastic-wrapped bodies of Mr. Peters, Officer Samuel and Dylan from the apartment on Monday afternoon, the question of why still lingered.
A woman dressed in royal blue hospital scrubs who said she was Mr. Peters’s mother collapsed, her arms and legs splayed on the pavement beneath a ribbon of police tape. When police officers helped her up, she wailed and sprinted to her home, about a block away.
“He’s my son. He’s my everything. Oh Father. Oh God. What a loving son I have,” she later said while sobbing on her patio.
Ionie Brown-Johnson, 73, a neighbor, recalled seeing Officer Samuel pushing Dylan in a stroller and cradling him.
“She walks along with the baby in her arms; she looks loving with the baby,” she said. “I’m shaking. I’m asking myself, ‘How could this happen?’ ”
The 19-year-old, whose name was not released, is Officer Samuel’s son from a previous relationship. Investigators said the officer used her “off-duty” gun, a 9-millimeter Glock that she was authorized by the department to carry when not on the job.