A Pennsylvania father was arrested Friday and charged with fatally shooting his young son’s mother and the boy’s grandmother after breaking into the victims’ New Jersey home, prosecutors said.
Junior Edwards, 37, allegedly committed the sickening double murder early Wednesday morning while his 8-year-old son was in the Willingboro Township home of the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office. said.
Edwards, of Lansdowne, was hit with two counts of first-degree murder and related charges in the shooting deaths of 33-year-old Catherine Nunez, who shared the son with the suspect, and her 54-year-old mother, Marisol Nunez .
Both women suffered multiple gunshot wounds and were pronounced dead at the scene in an upstairs bedroom.
Prosecutors say Edwards broke into the home around 4 a.m. Wednesday by breaking a first-floor window.
The child was home during the gunfire but was not injured.
The alleged murder weapon, a handgun, was found outside the home, the prosecutor’s office said.
Authorities have not revealed a motive for the fatal attack, but the victims’ family reportedly claimed Edwards was a “monster who had threatened them many times.”
“The American dream turned into an American nightmare,” Wilson Nunez, Marisol’s brother and Catherine’s uncle, told the Courier Post.
When Catherine traveled to New York City once a week for her job at a utility company, her mother, Marisol, would watch the boy at night, the grieving loved one said.
“This loss has devastated our family, and it reminds us how fragile life can be,” the family said on a GoFundMe page launched to raise money for funeral costs.
Edwards is also charged with residential burglary with a firearm, unlawful possession of a weapon, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and endangering the welfare of a child.
He was hit with the charges while already in custody on unrelated charges in Philadelphia.
