HO / Bucks County District Attorney’s Office / AFP
A woman and her daughter have been charged in Pennsylvania with murdering five members of their family, including three children, in what they claimed was a collective suicide pact.
Shana Decree, 45, and her daughter, Dominique, 19, have each been charged with five counts of murder, the US District Attorney’s office for Bucks County said in a statement.
They are being held without bail.
Police found the pair in a “disoriented” state on Monday in an apartment in Morrisville, a town of about 10,000 people some 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of New York.
The bodies of five of their relatives were discovered in the apartment and Shana and Dominque Decree told police they had all “wanted to die.”
“Shana advised that all, including the children, were talking about suicide,” detectives said in an affidavit.
They said the apartment was “in disarray, with furniture turned over and with broken glass and clutter throughout.”
Two of the victims were identified as Shana Decree’s children, Naa’Irah Smith, 25, and Damon Decree Jr., 13.
The others were Shana Decree’s sister, Jamilla Campbell, 42, and Campbell’s 9-year-old twin daughters Imani and Erika Allen.
All of the victims were apparently strangled but the two women gave contradictory accounts of who carried out the murders, police said.
