Two people who were killed in a murder-suicide in Port St. Lucie over the weekend were identified, police said.<\/p>\n
According to Port St. Lucie Police, the two individuals were 50-year-old Elizabeth Ortega and 50-year-old Ralph Varela Sr., who have been in a long-term cohabitation domestic relationship and lived with their adult son.<\/p>\n
Police said the shooting happened on Saturday at a residence in the 2000 block of Southwest Oxmoor Terrace.<\/p>\n
During their investigation, officers learned that their older son left the home at around 7:30 p.m. to pick up food from a restaurant, and at some point, Varela Sr. grabbed an AR-style rifle and started to shoot Ortega.<\/p>\n
As Varela Sr. continued to shoot, Ortega ran out of the home and tried to escape.<\/p>\n
Surveillance video reviewed by detectives showed Ortega in the front yard as Varela Sr. fired shots before she collapsed. Varela Sr. then went back into the home.<\/p>\n
When officers arrived at the home, they found Ortega suffering from multiple gunshot wounds, and she was airlifted to the hospital, where she died.<\/p>\n
Varela Sr was later found dead in the home due to an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.<\/p>\n
An investigation into the incident remains active.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two people who were killed in a murder-suicide in Port St. Lucie over the weekend were identified, police…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[171,173,172],"class_list":["post-361486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie","tag-port-st-lucie-headlines","tag-port-st-lucie-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}