John Jefferson
Left: Daniel Coppola in video in handcuffs and jail garb after his arrest (New York Post). Center and right: Kelly Coppola and Kenneth Pohlman appear in Facebook photos (ABC).
A Long Island, New York, community was rocked late Wednesday after a father allegedly showed up at a million-dollar home in St. James where his ex-wife lived with her boyfriend, called his 15-year-old daughter telling her to come out of the house and sit in his car, barged into the residence after hiding in the bushes, opened fire, returned to the car, and then told the teen “I killed your mother and Kenny.”
Daniel Coppola, 50, faces two second-degree murder charges in Suffolk County in the shooting deaths of 50-year-old Kelly Coppola, with whom he reportedly had a “contentious” divorce, and 53-year-old father of two Kenneth “Kenny” Pohlman, Jr., as the couple slept in their home on Brasswood Road.
The Long Island home where Kelly Coppola and Kenneth Pohlman were shot and killed (CBS New York).
The shocking series of alleged events began with suspect Coppola calling his daughter and telling her to leave the house he would soon enter, according to WABC.
Pohlman’s father spoke with the local ABC affiliate about his understanding of what happened next.
“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., reportedly said.
Tom Pohlman, a brother of the victim, told CBS New York that Kelly Coppola’s ex “shot down” the front door, “ran upstairs, shot [Kenneth] and her cold blank.”
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After suspect Coppola exited the house and drove off with his daughter in the car, the teen started texting friends, and they were the ones who called the police, the report said.
The girl reportedly called 911 as well to say her father was threatening to take his own life.
“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 said, News 12 reported. “They try and reach out to the mother, can’t get in touch with the mother, they call 911.”
Around midnight, cops reportedly found the victims dead at their residence and found the suspected killer at his home on Harbor Road, where he was arrested.
Under New York law, an individual commits second-degree murder when intentionally causing the death of another person, doing so in the course of committing another crime, or, in “circumstances evincing a depraved indifference to human life,” recklessly “engag[ing] in conduct which creates a grave risk of death to another person, and thereby causes the death of another person.”
A New York Post video on Friday showed the defendant saying nothing while in handcuffs and wearing jail clothes as he was led to a police van.
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