Not long before her arrest on federal charges related to the bomb planted at MacDill Air Force Base, 27-year-old Ann Mary Zheng texted tenants at the rental homes she and her brothers own.
The phone numbers and emails renters used to report maintenance issues or pay the rent through Zelle would no longer work, she told them before providing new contacts. It seemed, the tenants said, kind of hasty.
Three days later, Zheng was in federal custody, accused of helping the alleged would-be bomber, her brother Alen Zheng, hide evidence and flee the country.
Ann Mary Zheng and Alen Zheng, 20, have no prior criminal history in Florida, records show. Limited background checks using public records turned up none beyond the state, either.
They are second-generation Chinese American U.S. citizens who lived with their parents in Land O’ Lakes’ Lake Talia subdivision. The stuccoed two-story home sits across the street from the gated community’s namesake body of water.
It was quiet there on Monday. A black Mercedes SUV sat in the driveway, but no one answered the door.
Alen Zheng, charged with multiple felonies over the improvised explosive device found undetonated outside MacDill’s visitor’s center, has not been arrested. He is believed to be in China, according to federal prosecutors. Authorities have not publicly suggested a motive.
Their parents, Jia Zhang Zheng, 53, and Qiu Qin Zou, 47, were detained by immigration officials on March 18, county court records show.
Another brother, a 25-year-old student studying radiology, has not been accused of wrongdoing.
“They were always really nice, polite, responsive, good people,” said Marylou Castillo, a resident of a small apartment complex owned by Ann Mary Zheng in New Port Richey.
At another rental home owned by Alen Zheng a couple of miles away, Stacy Gobbels said she was shocked by the news.
“What does it mean for the people who rent from them?” she said. “Do I still pay my rent that goes to him? I mean, who knows what that money is going to?”
Public records show Ann Mary Zheng was born in New York, but she and her brothers seem to have grown up locally. The family has had ties to the area since at least 2006 when her father, old newspaper clips show, opened Golden House Buffet in New Port Richey.
Ann Mary Zheng, Pasco County school district officials said, graduated from Gulf High School in 2016.
She lists the University of Pennsylvania on a LinkedIn profile, but the university could not verify in its records that she’d attended.
Alen Zheng, officials said, graduated from Land O’ Lakes High School in 2024.
He was smart, former principal Rick Mellin said, and had been part of the rigorous International Baccalaureate program at one point. But he’d left that program before graduating with a traditional diploma.
He’s absent from a video of the school’s 2024 graduation ceremony posted to YouTube showing students walking across the stage to accept their diplomas.
“He was a quiet kid,” Mellin said. “He didn’t bring attention to himself.”
Others who worked at the school and who’d been involved in student discipline said they didn’t think he’d ever been in trouble.
More recently, Alen Zheng had been studying accounting at the University of South Florida for two semesters through last fall. A university spokesperson said he withdrew March 11, a day after investigators allege he planted the bomb.
Arguing for her pretrial release in a federal court hearing this week, Ann Mary Zheng’s public defender argued that she needed to be free in order to collect the rent.
In recent years, Alen and Ann Mary Zheng bought several homes in the New Port Richey area.
Their parents, who went by “John” and “Donna,” usually came to take care of maintenance issues, tenants said.
“Sometimes Ann Mary or the brothers came with them,” Castillo, one of the tenants, said. “(Alen) was quieter. He didn’t really talk unless he was spoken to. You could tell they all really respected their parents.”
U.S. Attorney Greg Kehoe said last week that the siblings’ mother was being held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and awaiting deportation. Kehoe’s office did not respond to a follow-up email seeking more information on the parents’ cases.
The family also owns a restaurant near Busch Gardens, said Kathy Jones, another of the Zhengs’ tenants in New Port Richey. Jia Zheng, the father, is listed in state business records as president of Asian Cuisine of Tampa on Busch Boulevard.
Times staff writers Dan Sullivan and Jeffrey S. Solochek contributed to this report.