The murders happened around 4:30 a.m. on May 15, 2012 in Port St. John, Florida. Lt. Tod Goodyear of the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office identified the mother as 33-year-old Tonya Thomas.
The children were identified as 12-year-old Joel Johnson, 13-year-old Jazzlyn Johnson, 15-year-old Jaxs Johnson, and 17-year-old Pebbles Johnson.
“This is a little bit different because they were older kids,” Goodyear said. “To kill all four, I can’t remember the last time a mom killed this many of her children.”
The shootings are the worst homicides to take place in Brevard County since 1987.
Thomas sent a text message around 3 a.m. to a male coworker that Goodyear said, “Tell my mom what happened, I want to be cremated with my children.”
The text was an indication that it was premeditated, Goodyear said. “A bad part of the investigation is that we may not get the why. Unless she left a note somewhere or told somebody, she may have taken it to the grave.”
A neighbor heard gunshots. Minutes later two of the children arrived on his doorstep. One of the boys, police believe it was Joel, was covered in blood and told the neighbor his mom had shot them. The oldest child, Pebbles, could be seen walking back towards the family home.
The children’s mother came outside and lured the kids back into the house.
“She was very calm, called them in,” Goodyear said. “She didn’t seem to be stressed or mad, just stepped out. She walked out and said ‘come home.'”
The neighbors say that they called out to the children, begging them not to go back to the house. That was the last time they saw the children.
The neighbors called police immediately who heard gunshots upon arrival.
EMTs pronounced Pebbles dead in the ambulance and a SWAT team was called for further investigation. Police say they heard another gunshot. Officers found the other three kids and Thomas all dead in the back of the house.
The family has a history of domestic violence.
In April 2012, Jaxs threw a bicycle through a window in the house and threatened Thomas. That next day, when she woke him up for school, he kicked and punched her repeatedly, the report said. She pushed back and they began to scuffle.
Police were called later that day and police say neighbors often complained of hearing shouts and yells emanating from the house.
A 911 call released on revealed that neighbors refused to let the children in their house before the mother called for them to come home.
The caller said she was confused about who was doing the shooting.
According to the 911 call, the female neighbor said she heard one child say the youngest child shot their mother. Later, she said the children told her husband that their mother was shooting at them.
Amid the confusion, the caller warned the children not to enter her home.
“Get back, you’re not coming in our house,” she can be heard saying in the recording.
The caller’s husband told the dispatcher that the children were frantically trying to enter their house.
“I don’t know who has the gun, so I’m not walking out there,” the 911 caller’s husband said to the dispatcher. “I’m armed but not going out there and putting myself in danger.”
When the caller’s husband grabbed his gun and ran outside, he said he saw one child bleeding at the front door.
The child went back when Thomas called for her children to come home. When deputies went to Thomas’ house, they found her dead of a self-inflicted wound. Three of her children were found shot dead inside the house and the fourth was found fatally shot in the front yard of a neighbor’s house.
Thomas shot her four children 18 times before killing herself. She was also a victim of domestic abuse.
Thomas used a Taurus .38-caliber revolver.
There were 19 gunshot wounds found on the victims, including the self-inflicted wound found on Thomas’ body.
Medical Examiner Sajid Qaiser said none of the children or their mother had major defensive wounds, indicating that there was no significant struggle before or during the shootings. Thomas then placed the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger, killing herself.
Qaiser said he noticed changes in Thomas’ liver and ordered toxicology screens on Thomas and all of her children.
“I know everyone thirsty to know why (the children) were not able to escape out of the house, how come one person shot their children so many times,” he said. “But we don’t have all of the information yet.”
Jazzlyn was shot the most, seven times. The gunshots perforated her lung three times as well as her spleen, pancreas, stomach and spine, Qaiser said.
Joel was shot five times. Jaxs took three bullets in his chest.
“Many of the shots were taken at contact range,” Qaiser said. “You can tell from the wounds and the clothing that the muzzle of the gun was pressed against the clothing, the body.”
Pebbles was also shot three times.
Meanwhile, an investigator of the Department of Children and Families spoke to Thomas and the children weeks before the family massacre and said there were no signs that the children were in distress. Each child said they felt safe in their home.
But hundreds of documents released by state officials detailed the family’s history and revealed that Thomas was a woman trapped in a cycle of domestic violence and was also abused or neglected as a child.
In 2000, children watched as their father Joe Johnson yelled at Thomas for not making dinner, then punched and kicked her, knocking her into a wall. The children were removed from their parent’s home for a month but were returned despite DCF’s objections.
The documents also said Thomas was not verbally or mentally abusive to the children. Investigators spoke with neighbors and school officials and watched the children at home and said they “appear bonded to their parents.” A supervisor signed off on the case on May 13.
It’s unclear how much contact the family had with Joe Johnson in the weeks before the shooting. He was not living at the home and an investigator wrote Thomas “does not have a relationship with a partner that is supportive of her ability to protect and nurture her children,” according to documents written last month.
“This is a horrendous tragedy, While these files offer a glimpse inside the families’ home, they do not appear to contain the answer as to ‘why’ this happened that we all seek at this time,” DCF spokeswoman Carrie Hoeppner said.
Authorities said they have no motive for the killings and are not sure why the children followed the mother’s orders to return to their house.
James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University, said that the circumstances appear to be a case of “suicide by proxy,” in which a family member takes the lives of loved ones “out of a warped sense of love” before killing herself.
“Typically, the perpetrator is suicidal, feels life is miserable and doesn’t want to go on,” Fox said. “But why does she take her children? Because she wished to be reunited with them in the afterlife or wants to spare them the misery of this life.”
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