A Pennsylvania man was arrested days after a mother and daughter were shot dead during a home invasion in Willingboro, New Jersey.
Junior Edwards, a 37-year-old man from Lansdowne, is in custody charged with two counts of murder, burglary of a home while armed with a firearm, endangering the welfare of a child and other charges, it was reported. the office of Burlington County Prosecutor LaChia Bradshaw.
Investigators believe Edwards punched through a first-floor window and broke into a home on Harrington Circle in Willingboro’s Hawthorne Park neighborhood early in the morning of Wednesday, Oct. 30. Inside, he shot 33-year-old Catherine Nunez and her mother Marisol Nunez, 54, multiple times.
Edwards and Catherine Nunez had an 8-year-old son who was home during the shootings but was not injured, Bradshaw’s office said.
On Friday, Edwards was served with arrest warrants for the two murders. He was already in custody in Philadelphia on other, unrelated charges.
Burglaries and murders put the neighbors on edge
In the first block of Harrington Circle, neighbors aware of the incident were scared, despite suspicions that the mother and daughter were targeted.
“It’s very scary to me because I know everyone on this street, so we don’t want something like that to happen,” neighbor Charlee Harris told CBS News Philadelphia’s Brandon Goldner. “For this to happen is overwhelming.”
Willingboro police arrived on scene Wednesday morning for a reported burglary before investigators found the Nunezes inside the home. The neighborhood planned a vigil Saturday evening to honor the two.
Multiple agencies outside of Burlington County assisted in the investigation, including the FBI Trenton Greater Safe Streets Task Force, the Lansdowne Police Department and the Philadelphia Police Department Violent Crimes Task Force.
