Police have charged a Staten Island man with murdering his wife, an Air Force servicewoman, and their two young children.
Shane Walker, 36, was charged with murder, manslaughter, arson and weapons possession for the slaying of Alla Ausheva and their two kids, authorities said. He was still being treated at Maimonides Medical Center Sunday.
Ausheva and the couple’s two toddlers, 2-year-old Ivan and 3-year-old Elia, were discovered dead in the bedroom of the family’s two-story Arrochar home around 10:30 a.m. Saturday by a concerned friend who stopped by to check on them, police sources said.
The boys were possibly drowned in the bathroom tub and then carried into the room where their mother’s lifeless body was found with severe injuries to her head and face, sources said. The city medical examiner will conduct autopsies to determine their exact cause of death.
Two and a half hours before the grisly discovery, police spotted Walker wandering the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in Brooklyn. He was taken to Maimonides for an evaluation.
Both husband and wife were Air Force members assigned to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, police sources said.
The Palisade St. block remained closed off Sunday afternoon as detectives continued their investigation.
“”I came to Staten Island from Brooklyn to be safer,” said shocked neighbor Delma Sorrenti as she walked by with her 9-year-old son Sunday. ”Staten Island’s always been a family-oriented community.”
Ausheva, 36, made headlines in 2012 when she won a green card lottery and was invited with 24 other military members to the White House to be sworn in as a U.S citizen.
The Russian-born woman had moved to Queens in the summer of 2011 and joined the New York Army National Guard three months later, where she served as a maintenance technician.
Neighbors were still grappling Sunday with the horrid details of Ausheva’s death.
“The fire engines came and then the police came and we were wondering what had happened, thinking maybe a carbon monoxide leak. But then the crime scene went up and we knew it had to be something else,” said Mary Jo Kammerer, 63. “It’s really sad.”
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