Friends remember Pennsauken sons slain by father

This was not the way anyone figured Alfred Moton Jr.'s life would end.

The 18-year-old Camden Catholic High School graduate had just begun his freshman year at Rowan University. He was majoring in biology, and one friend said Moton had talked about becoming a psychologist.

He would have been good at that, several friends agreed. He had a way with people.

"He was everyone's friend," said Melanie Kettelberger, one of several former high school classmates who were shocked to learn Friday that Moton's father had gunned him down at their home in Pennsauken.

Moton and his youngest brother, Stephen, 12, were killed and a third brother, Charles, 16, was seriously wounded in what authorities called a rampage by Alfred Moton Sr. late Thursday.

The father, 54, then set fire to the home, in the 4400 block of Royal Avenue, before police officers shot and killed him, authorities said. They said he had charged at the officers with a gun - presumably, they said, the .22-caliber pistol he had used to shoot his three sons.

Relatives and friends were left to put together the pieces Friday. Alfred Sr.'s wife and the mother of the three boys, Leonor Maldonado Moton, 48, was at work when the shootings occurred.

She could not be reached for comment Friday, and a woman answering at the Maldonado family home in Camden said, "Please, we have nothing to say right now."

Charles Moton, a junior at Camden Catholic High School in Cherry Hill, was in critical condition at Cooper University Hospital in Camden.

All three brothers were described as excellent students. Stephen was in sixth grade at St. Stephen's in Pennsauken.

"They were all alike," said Tiffany Jones, 20, a friend of Moton's who had gotten to know his brothers. "They were all loving, happy kids. Good manners. Never got in trouble at school."

All three sang in the choir at Our Lady of Fatima/Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in South Camden, friends said. Their mother, who came from Puerto Rico, had been a member of the parish while growing up in South Camden.

She and her husband had moved with their sons to the small, brick house on a quiet block in Pennsauken about 10 years ago, according to real estate records.

The boys and their mother were friendly, but the father largely kept to himself, neighbors said.

"The kids were nice. They were very mannerly," one neighbor, who didn't want to give his name, said Friday after police cordoned off half the block with yellow tape.

"They would play together in the backyard," he said of the brothers. "Basketball."

Sometimes, he said, friends joined them. The boys would always wave hello. So did their mother.

But not the father.

"You would see him coming and going in his truck, but he wouldn't wave. He was strictly a loner as far as the neighborhood went."

Alfred Moton Sr. drove a pickup truck and occasionally rode a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, the neighbor said.

Authorities said that he worked as a dental assistant in Berlin, and that his wife worked at a hospital. They would not provide details.

Several friends of the brothers said Friday that the marriage had been shaky, and that they had been told that Leonor Moton was considering a divorce. But police said they had no record of any kind of problem in the home.

On the surface, at least, it appeared that the parents had built a secure, middle-class setting for their sons. But friends said there had been hints of problems.

Ariana Williams, who graduated with Moton from Camden Catholic in June, said Moton had never talked much about his home life, but at one point had told her, "Me and my dad, we don't get along."

Kettelberger, who was Moton's date to the junior prom, said, "I know he had a tough home life, but he was always smiling."

Asked what the problems were, she said Moton had never provided details, but once had said "his dad would say mean things to him."

"He never said anything about physical abuse. He said he would come home and his father would say things. I'm not sure what," said Kettelberger, whose father works for The Inquirer.

Moton alluded to his father's unstable nature in a posting on his Facebook site in January.

"My dad is talkin about how the H1N1 shots are a set up for 2012, just like in I AM LEGEND," he wrote, a reference to a science-fiction movie about a plague that nearly destroys the world. ". . . He's talkin about how the government is makin a DEATH STAR to destroy earth . . . gawd he's so crazy."

Moton ended his post by writing, "Nuffin gonna happen anyway," then signed off with "lmao," shorthand for "laughing my a- off."

No one knows for sure what happened inside the Motons' home Thursday night, but it appears there was not much laughter.

What set Alfred Moton Sr. off remains one of the central questions in the investigation.

Neighbors reported hearing shots and said they had seen Alfred Jr. and Charles flee the house. Both collapsed on the street.

Stephen was found shot to death inside by police, who also found an unharmed elderly man, believed to be the boys' grandfather.

Camden Catholic principal Thomas Kiely described both older brothers as "very, very good students academically" and "very involved" in school activities.

He described Moton, who acted in school plays and sang in the choir, as "vibrant, thoughtful, funny."

He was a young man, Kiely said, who "had plans for his life. . . . He just bubbled. He was full of life."

Students at the high school were informed of the shootings Friday before the prayer that opens every school day. Grief counseling was provided.

At St. Stephen's grammar school, Stephen Moton was one of 27 sixth graders, part of what one parent described as a "close-knit group" of children who had been together since kindergarten.

"He was a very sweet boy and it seemed like a very loving family," said Marie Schwartz, a retired pediatrics nurse who volunteers at the school.

By Friday afternoon, police had removed the crime-scene tape from Royal Avenue, and passersby could get a closer look at the Motons' home.

The once-tidy house, in the middle of the one-block street just off busy Browning Road, is now testament to a troubled family setting.

The roof was destroyed in the fire. The interior, fire officials said, was gutted.