An unexpected evening

Mesa neighborhood shocked over killings

September 20, 2009 - 5:44AM , updated: September 22, 2009 - 2:32PM

This evening I spent some time with the the best friend of the eldest boy in story.

Archer (Dove) asked to go help her little friend to go pack for they have to move by Sunday Morning.

I would not allow her to go there alone but a intervention of sorts today helped me walk into the evening. Earlier today the computer would not work so I mopped floors and heard God...

He told me of guarding Archer's heart a heads up of sorts...A do not push her into rebellion kind of sense.

So while hearing her phone call I was prepared to respond.

She came to me and asked if she could go help her friend pack up her bedroom. She expected for me to say no.

I told her that WE could go over together and take some boxes and packing tape and offer them our help. I told her that if at any time the (kicked out boyfriend) came we would leave that instant!

So the little girls packed up the bedroom and I offered help to the mom, meanwhile the boyfriends 16 yr old son came in kitchen and sat on the counter as I washed the pile of dishes.

He opened his heart up to me.

He has not told his dad or the little girls mother that his best friend was just killed.

Then he proceeded to tell me that he has witnessed three separate murders!

He has lived with so many different people all of his life even strangers. This is a sweet kid! He then said his mom has been in prison his whole life.

MOTHER OF MANY

I told him that non of those events were his fault.

He wants to hold on to faith.

He spoke of getting a tattoo of faith and courage on his shoulders.

NO ONE sees him. I sat and watched him as he danced hip hop in the empty living room. Oh he was just a child so young and forced to witness so many things. One who was as a dad to him killing himself after not being allowed to visit the boy when the so called uncle was high. This child blamed himself for it.

EVERY THING we go through is about God Being Glorified in His compassion's presence.

I have been looking at the lies I have believed about those who took their lives around me. My heart was prepared to help this kid. He would go away if the little girls mother came around. Then return to sit and spill his sore soul out to me in her absence.

I have the little girl here overnight.

She said that she only sleeps at her grandparents house and here.

At home she wakes every hour she said the house is haunted. She is so happy to move out of it.

PLEASE PRAY FOR

CODY

This was his best friend and he is being evicted with his dad this weekend. He is so old at 16 and yet such a sweet little boy of heart so so very lost in this terrible wide world. I told him to keep his heart and gave him my phone number if he ever needed a thread to hold onto.

Mesa police remain on the scene as they investigate a possible murder-suicide in the 2500 block of South Pennington in Dobson Ranch. Sept. 20, 2009.

Ralph Freso, Tribune

Ryan Mullaly, 15, and Nicholas Mullaly, 12

SUBMITTED PHOTO

A memorial is set up Sept. 21, 2009, in front of the Mullaly home in the Dobson Ranch neighborhood of Mesa. The two boys Nicholas, 12, and Ryan, 15, were shot in the house by their mother before she turned the gun on herself, police said.

Tim Hacker, Tribune

Neighbors on a quiet Dobson Ranch street say they are surprised following what police are calling a murder-suicide there Saturday night.

Mother and children dead in murder, suicide

A mother shot and killed her two teenage children and herself in a single-story home in the 2500 block of South Pennington, near Dobson and Guadalupe roads at 11:37 p.m., said Detective Steve Berry, a Mesa police spokesman.

Police identified the boys as Ryan Mullaly, 15, and Nicholas Mullaly, 12. The mother was Susan Mullaly, 50. The boys were students at Rhodes Junior High School.

Dozens of friends and classmates who knew the two boys gathered in front of the house in the Dobson Ranch neighborhood late Sunday with candles and balloons to remember their friends, who they knew well. Many hugged, wiped tears and told stories about them.

Berry said the woman's husband came home from work and discovered the bodies and went to a neighbor's house to call police. Berry said the couple had been having marriage problems.

Officers arrived to find the mother dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, and found the boys dead from apparent gunshot wounds as they checked the home.

At the home Sunday afternoon, an orange Dodge Ram sat in the driveway below a single basketball hoop.

Diane Retson, who said she has lived next door to the family for at least 11 years, described the boys as "very well-behaved, very well-mannered."

"They were typical kids," she said.

Retson said the family was "very nice." The mother was a nurse and the father works for an airline, she said.

Police knocked on her door after midnight asking questions, but Retson said she did not hear anything unusual Saturday.

Retson's son, Andrew Lybek-Martori, 21, was visiting his mom Sunday.

"When I used to live here, almost every day the boys rode their bikes through the street," Lybek-Martori said. "It didn't seem like there was a problem. The mom seemed overprotective, but what mom isn't?"

Clint Snyder, 34, lives down the street from the home. He said he often saw the father in the driveway working on cars. Snyder said he and his family have lived there more than 11 years.

"All in all, it's just a family neighborhood. It's pretty solid," he said, noting he did not know the victims' family well.

Cindy Wong and her family just moved into their new home Saturday, two doors down the street from the incident.

"From the neighbors coming out, it seems all the families know each other well," Wong said. "It's just quite a shock."

Where have all the Mothers Gone?