The suspected gunman behind a bloody Bronx quadruple murder-suicide was a fun-loving local kid who played sports and worked construction before his life unexpectedly went off the rails.
Kaseem Stukes, 44, went to elementary school at PS 36 and junior high at PS 125 in Unionport, and grew up with a tight-knit group of friends who were “just trying to make it,” childhood pal Felix Angomas said.
But despite a gun rap earlier this year, friends and neighbors are shocked that he could be the monster who gunned down his 75-year-old mom, his daughter and her beau before turning the gun on himself in a Bronx bloodbath on Wednesday.
“I’m still numb,” Angomas, 47, told The Post Thursday. “I don’t know what could have led up to this.”
“I went to school with him. We went to PS 36 and PS 125. He was one of us. We got together, walked to school. We played football, basketball,” he added. “He was a fun guy. We were all out here, trying to do the best we can.”
On Wednesday morning, Stukes allegedly shot his mother, Theresa, along with his 26-year-old daughter, Kianna, and the younger woman’s boyfriend, Andrew Reynoso, 33, inside the family’s fifth-floor apartment at the Castle Hill House public housing complex.
He then turned the gun on himself, law enforcement sources said.
Police have not revealed what may have triggered the deadly outburst.
The violence stunned neighbors, who said Theresa Stukes as a beloved longtime tenant known in the building as one of “The Golden Girls,” they said this week.
“I got him his first job — in construction — when he got out of prison,” a family friend who only identified himself as Izzy said Thursday. “He always kept a job. We celebrated pay days together. He’d come to my apartment and we did a little celebration.
“One of my close friends saw him the night before it happened,” he said. “He feels guilty. He said he could have prevented it if he had only taken him for a walk. I told him, ‘No, you didn’t know.’”
Kaseem Stukes was arrested in May and charged with reckless endangerment and illegal weapons possession for an incident in the Bronx in September 2024, court records show.
According to prosecutors, the case was presented to a grand jury, which failed to indict Stukes on the charges. Records show he was due back in court on the day of the mass shooting.
The NYPD has identified all of the victims but has not singled out Kaseem Stukes as the shooter — but law enforcement sources told The Post he was the one believed to have pulled the trigger.
“We all used to meet here,” Angomas said outside the building on Thursday. “We’d go to his mother’s house, get a bag of chips. She would feed us, give us a couple of dollars.
“We were all trying to make it out of the ‘hood,’” he added. “We all make our own life choices.”
Additional reporting by Amanda Woods.
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