PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The Bucks County mother accused of shooting her two sons early last week is now facing murder charges after the boys died on Friday.
The brothers, 13-year-old Jeffrey Tini and 9-year-old Nelson Tini, succumbed to their injuries on Friday, their school district shared.
Investigators say they were shot by their mother, 38-year-old Trinh Nguyen, on May 2. Upper Makefield Township police were dispatched to their home on Timber Ridge Road shortly after 7 a.m., where they found both boys in bed with gunshot wounds to the head.
They were taken to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and had been on life support up until Friday.
The Bucks County District Attorney's Office said Nguyen then tried to shoot her 22-year-old nephew, who is also her neighbor, after shooting her sons. Nguyen told police she handed him a box of photos and asked him to give it to her ex-husband. She then turned a gun on him, but it misfired and he was able to disarm her.
Nguyen was arrested about four and a half hours after the shooting, at a church parking lot in Washington Crossing.
She was initially charged with three counts of attempted homicide — two for her sons, one for her neighbor — but those charges have now been upgraded to two counts of first-degree murder.
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According to an updated criminal complaint, Nguyen planned the killings at least a week earlier, investigators say. She left a handwritten will, dated April 25, that provided instructions on what to do with her and her sons' remains.
Nguyen told authorities that she did not flee the scene but rather drove to New Jersey to buy drugs with the intention of killing herself.
Detectives found gun ammunition, several suspected packets of heroin and blood in her car. The gun was recovered from her neighbor’s front porch.
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There was also a note left on the dashboard of her car, which read:
“Please call 911!
My children are Dead in their bed
at 119 Timber Ridge Rd
18940”
According to court records, Nguyen was scheduled to be evicted the day after the shooting.