A quiet neighborhood in Hamilton Township was shattered by violence in the early hours of Thursday morning, leaving two adults and a child dead in what authorities are investigating as a domestic murder-suicide.
The Mercer County Homicide Task Force, alongside the Hamilton Police Division, is piecing together the grim details of a crime that has left a community reeling.
Just before 4 a.m. on June 5, 2025, officers responded to a 911 call from a home on the 200 block of Henry Street.
Inside, they found a scene of unspeakable horror: an adult woman, her 10-year-old daughter, and an adult man, all fatally wounded by gunfire. Emergency medical personnel pronounced them dead at the scene.
Preliminary findings suggest the man, believed to be the woman’s partner, turned a gun on her and her young child before taking his own life.
The cold precision of such an act raises urgent questions about the unchecked access to firearms, the warning signs that may have been missed, and the systemic failures that too often leave women and children vulnerable to lethal violence in their own homes.
Mercer County Prosecutor Janetta D. Marbrey confirmed the ongoing investigation but offered few additional details, citing the need for thorough scrutiny before drawing final conclusions.
Yet the outlines of this tragedy are already painfully familiar—another name added to the grim tally of lives lost to intimate partner violence, another child buried too soon, another family destroyed in an instant of rage or despair.
Mercer County authorities said the man shot his girlfriend and her 10-year-old daughter to death before turning the gun on himself. Authorities have not released the names of the man or the victims killed in the double murder-suicide.
As detectives comb through evidence and neighbors struggle to make sense of the unthinkable, one thing is clear: this was not just a private tragedy, but a public failure. How many more mothers, how many more children, must die before we confront the rot at the heart of a society that allows such violence to fester?
The Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office has promised updates as the investigation progresses. But for the lives cut short on Henry Street, no answers will ever be enough.
“My only daughter. Strong like me,” said Bladimir Velasquez, the girl’s father, who identified her as Evangelina Velasquez. “She was always very clever.”
He said Evangelina, a fourth grader, loved to swim and stay active. Velasquez said the girl’s mother is his ex-girlfriend, Claribel Torres.