A million-dollar St. James home where his ex-wife and her boyfriend resided reportedly shocked a Long Island, New York, community late on Wednesday night.
The man allegedly called his 15-year-old daughter, telling her to come outside and sit in his car. He then allegedly barged in after hiding in the bushes, opened fire, went back to the car, and told the teen, “I killed your mother and Kenny.”
In connection with the shooting deaths of 50-year-old Kelly Coppola—with whom he apparently had a “contentious” divorce—and 53-year-old Kenneth “Kenny” Pohlman, Jr., the father of two—while they were sleeping in their Brasswood Road home, Daniel Coppola, 50, is charged with two counts of second-degree murder in Suffolk County.
According to a news outlet, the start of the horrifying sequence of alleged events started when suspect Coppola called his daughter and told her to leave the house he was about to enter.
“So he leaves her in the car, goes behind the bush — she said behind the bush and evidently he broke down the door, went up and did what he did, came back, and told his daughter ‘I killed your mother and Kenny,'” Kenneth Pohlman, Sr., stated.
The victim’s brother Tom Pohlman told CBS New York that Kelly Coppola’s ex-boyfriend “shot down” the front door and then “ran upstairs, shot [Kenneth] and her cold blank.”
The report stated that the youngster began messaging friends, who then called the police, after suspect Coppola left the house and drove off with his daughter in the car.
According to reports, the daughter also contacted 911, saying her father was making suicide threats.
“He went to the house on Brasswood Road, picked the girl up, put her in his car, committed the murders, drove her from there to Harbor Road. As he is driving her, she is communicating with friends via text, saying ‘I don’t know what my father did, I don’t know how my mother is,'” Suffolk Police Detective Lt. Kevin Beyrer stated. “They try and reach out to the mother, can’t get in touch with the mother, they call 911.”
Police reportedly discovered the couple dead at their home around midnight and apprehended the accused murderer at his Harbor Road property.
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Second-degree murder is defined by New York law as intentionally killing someone else, killing someone while committing another crime, or recklessly “engag[ing] in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to another person, and thereby causes the death of another person” in situations that show a depraved indifference to human life.
The defendant was escorted to a police van on Friday while wearing jail garb and handcuffs, and a video posted by the New York Post showed him doing nothing except standing there.
