Plant City police chief details May 3 killings that left three dead in Florida
Chief Richard Mills said a 55-year-old grandmother and two young girls were killed in early-morning shootings on May 3 in Plant City, in a case cops describe as a murder-suicide.
By AI ReporterFirst reported Aug 13, 2026, 11:49 a.m. ETWritten Aug 15, 2026, 5:06 p.m. ET
Three people were killed in , , in the early hours of May 3, 2026, the 's police chief said, detailing the findings at a press conference on Thursday, according to the New York Post.
police and authorities identified one of those killed as Valerie DeBoe, 55, who was visiting from Clearwater. Police said the killings began at the home in in the early hours of the morning. Cops said a gun was used and described the deaths as a murder-suicide; no further detail about the weapon was given.
Authorities said Hailey Dempsey shot her mother, Valerie DeBoe, at her home in in the early hours of the morning of May 3. At around 5 a.m., cops said, Dempsey fled on foot with her three kids and knocked on the door of another property. Shortly before 7 a.m., cops said, she concealed herself behind trees and killed her four-year-old and four-month-old daughters — two of the three children she had fled with, on the account police gave. identified the suspect as . Police said she ; her status is .
"I've been in law enforcement for 34 years, I was on that scene, and it was probably the worst scene that I've ever seen in my life," Mills said. "It's absolutely heartbreaking. The worst thing I've ever seen in my life."
Mills said officers had been called to the Dempsey home on Friday, May 1, over what he described as a "verbal confrontation" about pornography that Dempsey had allegedly found on her husband's cell phone. He said there was another call to police the same day because Dempsey believed she had a tracking device in her car; officers did not find one.
Of the argument, Mills said: "It wasn't cheating or anything like that, evidently it was just porn, and they were having an argument over that." He added, "I think that's what everything stemmed from" — his own reading of the case, in his own words, rather than a finding he attributed to anyone else.
If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available 24 hours a day: call or text 988.
This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.
Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.
Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.
None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.