A “polite” 14-year-old boy has been charged with the murders of his mother and younger brother after they were shot dead as they slept in their beds.
According to court documents, Jacob Remaley dialled 911 and tried to blame the killings on his father after his relatives were blasted at point blank range.
But later he allegedly told detectives he grabbed a gun on top of a fridge in the family’s kitchen before he shot his mother Dana and eight-year-old brother Caleb in New Stanton, Pennsylvania.
The teenager reportedly told police he would have shot his father David, a US army veteran, if he was home at the time on Wednesday morning.
He has been charged as an adult over the killings and is said to be undergoing mental health care.
District Attorney John Peck said: "It was an intentional act. There was an intent to kill."
The boy’s grandfather David Remaley Snr told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review the family have no idea what led to the murders.
He told the newspaper he would one day “forgive” the teenager who he described as “polite and mild-mannered”.
He said: “Yeah one day I'll believe I'll forgive him. I'm a pretty easygoing guy and sometimes you can't stop terrible things from happening.
“My wife, Joyce, and I are retired and we were watching the noon news and saw there was a homicide in New Stanton and they had a road shut off.
“But we didn't put two and two together until my son, David, called at 3 pm and told us what happened.
“We have no clue. There was never, ever anything that we thought he could do something like this nothing like that going on,” Remaley said.
“They have no ideas what led to this, and we don't know either.”
Friends of the Remaleys described them as an "all-American family".
They said Jacob was a straight-A student who donated his hair to cancer charities, Caleb always had a smile on his face while their mother was an active community volunteer who loved her sons.
