Three people are dead and two children are injured in an apparent murder-suicide in Elmore County on Saturday, July 7, 2018.

The girl’s mother, Charlene “Charley” Orsi, 44, was shot and killed by her estranged husband, Robert “Bob” Orsi, 51, as she came to the family home on Granite Drive to pick up the children, Franklin said. One of the triplets died in the incident. The couple’s 13-year-old daughter wasn’t injured. She fled to a neighbor’s home after Charley Orsi was shot, Franklin said.

After shooting his wife, outside the home, and forcing the triplets to lay face down in a room in the house where he shot them multiple times, Orsi then spread an accelerant throughout the house and set the home ablaze, Franklin said. Bob Orsi’s remains were found in the rear portion of the home, he had died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, the sheriff said.

Two of the surviving 12-year-old triplets shot by their father in an Elmore County murder-suicide recovered from their wounds in a Montgomery hospital. They have both undergone surgeries. One of the girls may have multiple surgeries in front of her. One of the bullets were lodged very close to her spine.

What is known is Charley Orsi filed for divorce on June 28, and was seeking custody of the couple’s four children, courthouse records show. Bob Orsi filed his response to the divorce papers on July 2, indicating that he would contest the divorce and granting custody of the children to Charley Orsi.

Bob Orsi allegedly abused drugs, which may have “exacerbated,” the situation.

Both of these girls received multiple gunshot wounds, he said. They told investigators that they both played dead until their father left the room and began spreading accelerant, they think it was gasoline, throughout the house. They picked that time to make their escape. From what they could see of the condition of their sister, they knew she couldn’t make it out of the home.

A deputy arrived at the home after getting a call of a person shot. He found Mrs. Orsi in the carport area of the home, suffering from a gunshot wound to the head. He felt he had an active shooter, so he went into the home and met the girls at the door as they were fleeing the fire.

The deputy escorted the girls to a neighbor’s home and then returned to the home where he went inside, but was driven out by the fire and smoke. He left the home and attempted to get back inside from another part of house but was again driven out by the fire and smoke.

They had two investigators at the hospital, each one talked with one of the girls separately. They were almost word for word exact in their statements to investigators as to what happened. They described their father forcing them to lie down on the floor, facedown, and then he went down the line shooting. One. Two. Three.

The girls will likely go to Charley Orsi’s parents, who were moving from her native New York to the area to be closer to the grandchildren, Franklin said. Her parents and brother drove up at the home about an hour after the shootings and fire. Fire departments were still battling the blaze. So they were already planning to move closer but didn’t expect to show up to this awful news.

The tragedy occurred nine days after Charlene Orsi, 44, filed for divorce.

They had brought down a U-Haul with their belongings, law enforcement had to tell them their daughter and sister were dead and that one of their grandchildren and the uncle’s niece was likely dead. They had not had the chance to recover her body from the house at this time.

Charley Orsi was a third-grade teacher at Redland Elementary School, just down the road a ways from the couple’s home. She began teaching at Redland in 2016, her bio on the school’s Facebook page states. She became a certified teacher in 2014 and began teaching at Holly Navarre Intermediate School in Florida. Bob Orsi retired from the U.S. Air Force after serving 29 years, the bio reads. That’s when the couple returned “home” to Redland.

Charley joined the Air Force in 1992 and served four years, as a radiology technologist with a specialty in mammography, the bio reads. The couple were married Aug. 17, 1994 in Anchorage, Alaska.

As far as any one could see, they were a picture perfect family. One day it just all came crashing down and unfortunately lives were lost in the process. The two surviving triplets have since moved away with their grandparents and tried starting over. I wish them the best in life, not sure how one comes back from such horror. We are lucky any of the children even survived.