Delco man, 84, kills blind daughter and self
Robert Killian of Drexel Hill apparently worried about care for Barbara Killian, 53, who was blind.
A sickly 84-year-old Delaware County man, apparently unable or unwilling to imagine his blind daughter going on without him, killed her and their dog before turning the gun on himself Saturday night, Upper Darby Police said yesterday.
Robert Killian of Drexel Hill was so protective of his 53-year-old daughter, Barbara Killian, that he did not like neighbors helping him to care for her, a neighbor said. And he had no other relatives to turn to, police said.
"I've never seen her without him," said Elizabeth Callaghan, who lives two doors away from the Killians on Cheswold Road.
Robert Killian suffered from "significant cardiovascular problems," Upper Darby Township Police Chief Michael Chitwood said. Killian had returned from the hospital on Tuesday and was last seen on Wednesday.
A neighbor who cooked meals for Barbara Killian while her father was hospitalized called police Saturday night. Police arrived around 6 p.m. and climbed in through a second-story bathroom window, Chitwood said.
In the basement they found a scene that Chitwood, a veteran Philadelphia police officer, called "as tragic as any of them."
Lying face-down on the floor was Barbara Killian, dead from a gunshot wound to her head. Slumped on top of her was Robert Killian, who apparently shot himself in the head with his .38-caliber revolver. Between them was their white Maltese named A-Rod, also shot.
Chitwood said investigators can only conclude by neighbors' accounts and what they found at the scene that Robert Killian thought he was going to die and didn't think there was anyone - or didn't trust anyone - to protect his daughter. There was no note.
"I guess in his opinion, as crazy as it may sound, it was some kind of mercy killing," Chitwood said. "We won't know."
Callaghan said Robert Killian doted on his little dog but that his daughter was more social.
Barbara Killian, a baseball fan, named the dog after New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez, whom she became friends with through an organization for the blind, Callaghan said.
