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A Rhode Island dad fatally shot his entire family — including his seven-months pregnant wife — with a semi-automatic carbine late last week in a gruesome murder-suicide that’s rocked their tiny town.
Cops in West Greenwich — a sprawling, rural area a half-hour southwest of Providence — say Nicholas Arruda, 39, shot wife Danielle and their two young kids to death, then turned his M4-style weapon on himself.
“We believe it is the weapon used in the murder/suicide,” police said in a statement. “However, a formal firearms examination has not yet been conducted.”
Danielle, the 39-year-old homeowner, was seven months pregnant when she was murdered, according to Fall River Reporter.
Police found her and the couple’s two kids, ages 2 and 5, dead in the home Friday morning after they did a welfare check because Danielle hadn’t shown up to work for a few days, according to the Boston Globe.
All four were still wearing their pajamas when they died, Police Chief Richard Ramsay said.
The scene was “one of the worst” he’s come upon during his 30-year career, he added.
Danielle — a paralegal at Marinosci Law Group in nearby Warwick — was last seen alive on New Year’s Day when she bought pellets for her stove.
Multiple reports said there were no indications of strife, and the couple appeared to have “loved one another and they loved their children,” the police chief said.
Ramsay added that cops had never been to the Cheyenne Trail home, which the family bought in 2019.
The couple went to high school together and married in 2017, according to the Globe.
Nicholas had been arrested once, about 11 years ago, for felony assault while in another relationship, the outlet said.
It’s not clear how the case was resolved.
He’d worked as a painter but had been unemployed for several years because of a back injury.
“He was a stay-at-home dad who was homeschooling the children,” Ramsey said.
It may never be clear why Arruda chose to butcher his family, the chief added, noting that such cases are “pretty much self-explanatory.”
“But we still have to go through all the motions to find out,” he said. “If there’s anything that somebody missed, any reason that would lead someone to do what he had done to his family.”
