Pregnant mother and her two young kids are killed in horrifying bloody murder

A husband with a history of violent encounters in previous relationships and known for stockpiling guns fatally shot his pregnant wife and their two young children before turning the gun on himself in their Rhode Island home.

Nicholas Arruda, 39, killed his wife Danielle Arruda, 39, along with their five-year-old daughter Adele and their two-year-old son Felix with a semiautomatic weapon in their West Greenwich home last week.

Nicholas then took his own life with a single bullet to the head in the gruesome murder-suicide.

Danielle was seven months pregnant with the couple’s third child, tragically bringing the total number of deaths to five.

“They lived together, and all indications from family and friends were that they loved each other and their children,” West Greenwich Police Chief Richard Ramsay said.

“I wish there could be an explanation to help you understand this heinous act,” he added. “But the truth is, we may never know why it happened.”

The gruesome discovery came after colleagues at Marinosci Law Group, where Danielle worked as a paralegal, called the police to conduct a welfare check after she failed to show up for work for several days.

Officers arrived around 10:30 a.m. Friday morning at the home at 15 Cheyenne Trail, a neighborhood close to the Lake Mishnock shoreline where the couple had lived since 2019.

No one in the home answered the door when officers arrived.

The “suspicious circumstances” prompted police to enter the home, where Ramsey said they were confronted with “one of the worst” crime scenes he had seen in more than 30 years.

Officers discovered the bodies of all four family members lying on the floor in their pajamas.

“It was clear that there were no signs of life in the bodies and that all four had suffered fatal gunshot wounds,” Ramsey said.

Investigators found no obvious signs of a struggle by any of the victims.

The back door of the house was blocked by debris and the front door was locked from the inside and secured with a chain lock.

A ‘semi-automatic weapon of the M4 type’ was found near Nicholas’ body.

“My brother committed the most cowardly, despicable act you could commit,” Jesse Arruda, Nicholas’ brother, told the newspaper. Boston sphere.

“Quite literally the opposite of what a man should do.”

Two other firearms were also found in the home, a shotgun and a semi-automatic rifle. All weapons are believed to have been purchased legally.

“This came out of the blue,” said Mikayla Ruffner Cihat, Danielle’s 26-year-old cousin with whom she recently spent Christmas. The Providence Journal.

Police had not been notified of any previous problems at the home, but they did have indicators that could explain why Arruda committed the heinous act.

“The investigation to date has not revealed any clues as to why Nicholas Arruda murdered his family,” Ramsay said.

“It’s heartbreaking,” he added. ‘You can’t really do much with such research.’

The shooting took place sometime between 8 p.m. on New Year’s Day and 5:20 a.m. on January 2. Danielle was last known to be alive on Jan. 1, when she bought pellets for her stove, according to police. Fall River reporter.

Neighbors on the quiet cul-de-sac said they heard nothing unusual from the house and added that they hardly knew the family.

“I know she went to work every day,” said a neighbor, who asked to remain anonymous Boston sphere. ‘But they stayed true to themselves. They were quiet people. I don’t even know his first name.’

The neighborhood where the Arrudas live, which has a population of 7,000, is not an unusual place to hear the sound of gunshots, neighbors said.

It is surrounded by dozens of hectares of forest, making hunting a popular activity in the area.

‘My wife and I have lived here for 35 years. All the neighbors around here have been here for a long time,” Cheyenne Trail resident Harold Mann told the Boston Globe.

“Nothing like this has ever happened here,” Mann added. “But something like this, I think, could happen anywhere.”

Nicholas was previously a painter, but was out of a job since he and Danielle became a couple due to a back injury.

Instead, he stayed home and homeschooled their children every day while his wife went to work.

Although authorities had never previously had contact with the family, Nicholas was no stranger to the legal system.

In 2002, he was arrested while living in North Kingstown.

Because he was not yet 18 years old at the time, the case was sealed.

West Warwick police arrested Nicholas in 2014 and charged him with assault related to a previous relationship, the Boston Globe reported.

At the time, authorities found and seized a loaded rifle, ammunition and hand grenades, which were eventually returned to Nicholas on a judge’s order in January 2016.

The victim in that case refused to cooperate with investigators and the charges were ultimately dismissed.

Nicholas was arrested again in 2014 and charged with assault, battery, disorderly conduct and one count of assault.

His second arrest that year came after the mother of a 17-year-old girl he was dating reported an incident to police, the Boston Globe reported.

When her daughter came home after school that day, Arruda began arguing with the teen, calling her “worthless” and telling her that “the relationship was going nowhere.”

The police report detailed how he then pulled out a gun, pointed it at his head and threatened to kill himself.

But after a long conversation between the two, he moved the gun and pointed it at the girl’s head, telling her that he was going to kill her and that he wanted to “see her die.”

A rifle with a fully loaded clip along with one bullet still in the chamber; a tactical vest that contained ammunition; and during a search, ‘numerous boxes of ammunition’ and ‘other materials’, including several hand grenades, were found in his home.

Sergeant Raymond Lemoi wrote in his report at the time that Nicholas had a swastika tattoo on his right shoulder, but that he was not known to be affiliated with any hate groups.

In January 2016, another woman took him to court in connection with a child support case involving the Department of Human Services, the Globe reported.

Two years later, Rhode Island passed the “red flag” law, allowing police to seek an “extreme risk protective order” from the Superior Court to prohibit an individual from possessing weapons based on threats and other warning signs.

Nicholas was never flagged by West Warwick police because the law was passed four years after his arrest.

Danielle graduated from North Kingstown High School in 2004, a year after Nicholas graduated from the same school, but it was said that the two were not friends at the time.

While Danielle was known by former classmates and friends as “one of the nicest people,” Nicholas was described as quiet and reserved with a reputation for having “toxic” relationships.

Cayla Liebrich, a former classmate of the couple, told the Boston Globe that by the time Nicholas graduated in 2003, “his whole personality was that he was a skinhead.”

Danielle and Nicholas married in 2013.

A former colleague of Danielle’s told the Globe that Nicholas “basically played video games 24/7” and played “a lot of first-person shooters” early in their marriage.

The brutal killings are the first in West Greenwich since 2016.

“I am still absolutely stunned, shocked, saddened and disgusted,” Shawn Cary, another of Danielle’s former colleagues, told the Globe. ‘How can this happen.’

Tragically, murder is the leading cause of death among pregnant women, as well as pregnant girls and women who have given birth in the past year, according to a study. published by Sage Journals last year.

Just over 10 percent of homicides occurred during pregnancy, of which 56.3 percent were firearms-related.

Both women and girls who are pregnant or have given birth in the past year are shockingly twice as likely to die from homicide.