Philly mom charged with fatally shooting 2 young daughters, husband

After shooting her two young daughters and her husband in the head Monday night, Damyrra Jones shot herself in the head in the first floor of their Tacony home, police said Tuesday.

As she was being transported in the back of an ambulance to Jefferson Torresdale Hospital, Jones “admitted to shooting everyone and demanded not to be resuscitated,” Police Homicide Capt. Jason Smith told reporters at an afternoon news conference.

On Wednesday, with Jones still in critical condition at the hospital, police announced that she was charged with three counts of murder, two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, and one count of possession of an instrument of crime.

Smith said Tuesday that the father, 35, had not been living in the house recently, and that the couple apparently had squabbled over child-support payments.

The homicide captain said that Jones had purchased her 9mm Ruger handgun at Delia’s Firearms in Wissinoming on Monday.

Police on Wednesday identified Jones’ two daughters as Maxillie Alcindor, 4 years old, and Damaya Alcindor, 10 months old.

An older sister of Jones’ who arrived Tuesday afternoon outside the family’s home on the 6300 block of Hegerman Street identified the girls’ father as Max Alcindor.

Police had responded to the home about 9:50 p.m. Monday after a 911 call reporting gunshots. The father was pronounced dead inside. The girls were rushed by police to St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children, where they also were pronounced dead.

Jones was found lying facedown with the gun in her hand. Police recovered the gun, four fired cartridge casings, and a projectile, Smith said.

Neighbors on the quiet residential Tacony block were in shock Tuesday.

Anachelys Martinez had been in her rowhouse Monday night with her 9-month-old son when she heard gunshots next door, then called 911.

“The only thing I can say is they were fighting all the time,” the 23-year-old said of the couple.

As Martinez recalled the horror from the night before, four kids were playing on the block bedecked in Halloween decorations. Martinez said the couple had moved into their home around the summer of 2018 and mostly kept to themselves.

Relatives of the slain father drove onto the block Tuesday, got out of their cars, cried, called out in anger, and went to the house. A few went inside the two-story brick rowhouse, then came out. Most declined to speak to reporters.

Five houses down, Mary Munizza, 62, sat on her front steps with grandsons Josh, 16, and Kyle, 7. “We were all bawling our eyes out,” she said. The boys didn’t get any sleep so they didn’t go to school Tuesday, she said.

“It’s just so senseless,” said Munizza. “Why would you kill your babies? I just can’t fathom it.”

Kyle and Josh Munizza recalled playing with the older girl, who they believed was 6 and was in first grade. (Police said the older girl was born in 2015 and was 4 years old.)

“The little girl was just like her dad — the infectious smile,” Mary Munizza recalled. She often played on the block, Munizza said.

Josh Munizza recalled the girls’ father as being “always friendly to everybody.”

The girls’ mother had a job driving a small school bus, Mary Munizza and another neighbor, Maria Rodriguez, said.

Rodriguez, 31, who lives across the street from where the shooting occurred, said she had heard four gunshots Monday night as she was eating dinner and speaking to a friend on the phone.

After the first shot, there was silence, “then three more in a row,”she said.

The triple fatal shooting also touched other residents who didn’t know the family. John Pagan, 33, drove onto Hegerman Street, then placed and lit a glass-enclosed white candle on a low brick wall in front of the family’s lawn. Pagan said he heard a news report about the shootings and decided to stop on the block on his way to his job as an auto mechanic.

“I got babies, too,” he said of his daughter, 10, and son, 12.

Staff photographer Tyger Williams contributed to this article.