A mother walked out of her Florida home before dawn with her three little girls. Two hours later, four people from that same family were dead, and investigators would spend the next three months trying to piece together why.
Hailey Megan Dempsey, 27, of Plant City, is now at the center of one of the most gutting cases local police have handled in years. Her mother and two of her daughters were killed. She died too, in what authorities have ruled a murder-suicide.
Only her two-year-old daughter survived.
Police say Dempsey and her husband had argued days earlier after she found pornography on one of his phones. Investigators have looked closely at that fight, but they still haven’t called it the official motive.
What they have laid out is a timeline: an argument, a string of police visits, and then a morning that ended in tragedy.
What Happened the Morning of the Shootings
The violence played out across two locations, starting inside the family’s home and ending nearly a mile away in a wooded area off West Tever Street.
Police say it began early on May 3 inside the family’s home on North Burton Street. That’s where investigators believe Dempsey shot and killed her mother, 55-year-old Valerie DeBoe.
From there, she left on foot with all three of her daughters. Just before 7 a.m., she reached a spot near West Tever Street and led the girls behind some trees and bushes, according to police.
That’s where she shot her four-year-old and four-month-old daughters, killing them both. She also fired at her two-year-old, but missed, before turning the gun on herself.
Officers responding to a disturbance call found them there. Dempsey later died from her injuries.
The Fight That Happened Two Days Before
Police believe the argument over what Dempsey found on her husband’s phone set everything in motion, even if they won’t call it the official cause.
Plant City Police Chief Richard Mills Jr. said officers responded to the Dempsey home on May 1 after a domestic dispute between the couple. At the center of it: infidelity and pornography, Dempsey said she’d found on her husband’s phone.
“I think that’s where everything stemmed from,” Mills said.
Even so, investigators have stopped short of officially naming it the trigger. They’ve folded it into the broader timeline they built while trying to understand what pushed Dempsey toward that morning.
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Police Had Already Been to the House
Officers had visited the Dempsey home three separate times in the days leading up to the shootings, and none of those calls raised a red flag.
One of those visits was tied to the May 1 argument. The second one was when Hailey reported that she believed a tracking device had been placed on her vehicle. Officers checked but found no tracker. The family stayed at a hotel that night.
Police returned to the home to provide a standby while Hailey and her family collected belongings. Officers again reported seeing no physical violence or criminal activity.
Looking back, those earlier visits have become one of the most scrutinized parts of the case, mostly because nothing about them hinted at what was coming.
Why Her Husband Became a Suspect, Briefly
Police investigated Jay Dempsey for months before clearing him completely.
With four people dead across two crime scenes, detectives couldn’t rule out the possibility that someone else was involved. So they looked at him.
He was never arrested or charged. Investigators say they combed through search warrants, surveillance footage, digital records, and forensic evidence, with help from state and federal agencies, before concluding Dempsey acted alone.
What Investigators Still Haven’t Explained
Even with the case closed, several major questions remain unanswered.
Police haven’t said where the gun came from, who it belonged to, or how Dempsey got access to it. They also haven’t confirmed whether she left behind a note or offered any real insight into her state of mind in the days before.
What’s happened to the surviving two-year-old since then also hasn’t been made public.
The One Who Survived
Out of five family members caught in that morning’s violence, only one child is still here.
Her sisters and grandmother didn’t make it. Neither did her mother. She did, only because, police say, a shot meant for her missed.
Case closed doesn’t always mean answers found. Police can tell you what happened, hour by hour: the argument on May 1, the visits nobody flagged, the shooting inside the house, the second scene before sunrise. What they still can’t tell you is why.
How do you think a tragedy like this could have been caught sooner?
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