Arianna Daniel knows that her mother, 25-year-old Taylor Daniel, is gone, but the 3-year-old girl doesn’t know much beyond that.
Arianna’s older sister, 5-year-old Aubree, meanwhile, knows that their mother was killed inside their Bucks County home over the weekend. She also knows that their father, 26-year-old Andre Gordon, is the man accused of killing her.
Explaining all this was one of the many difficult tasks for Nancy Daniel – Taylor’s mother and the grandmother of the two young girls – as she copes with the loss of her daughter.
“I just tell them that daddy was really angry,” Nancy said. “And we don’t know why it happened.”
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During an interview with NBC10, Nancy showed the room inside their home in Levittown where her daughter grew up.
“Even the paint, that was her color,” Nancy said. “She wanted purple and lime green.”
Bucks County triple homicide
According to Nancy, her daughter and Gordon were high school sweethearts who lived together and dated on and off for nearly five years.
“She really wanted it to work,” Nancy said. “She wanted her kids to have a dad.”
But after their second daughter Arianna was born, Taylor began noticing a change in Gordon, according to Nancy. That’s when Taylor moved back in with Nancy, bringing her two young daughters with her.
“He would stop coming home for days on end,” Nancy said. “He stopped paying the rent. So she moved back home because they were about to be evicted.”
A few weeks after Taylor and Gordon broke up for good, Gordon was given a psychiatric evaluation and was sent to a mental health facility for a month, according to Nancy. Nancy believes he’s been unhoused ever since then.
“He started showing up a few weeks ago banging on the door, yelling and screaming,” Nancy said.
Everything escalated on the morning of March 16, 2024, according to investigators.
Gordon first carjacked a woman in Trenton, New Jersey, officials said. He then drove the stolen vehicle to the home of his stepmother, 52-year-old Karen Gordon, shortly before 9 a.m., on Viewpoint Lane in Levittown, according to investigators.
It’s at that home where Gordon allegedly shot and killed his stepmother as well as his 13-year-old sister Kera Gordon while armed with an AR-15 assault rifle, according to court documents. Other family members, including Gordon’s father and another teenager, were inside the home at the time of the shooting, investigators said.
A few minutes later, Gordon arrived at Nancy’s home nearby on the unit block of Edgewood Lane, investigators said.
“The door we had had a pane of glass,” Nancy said. “And he kept smashing and smashing and smashing until the door banged open.”
Nancy told NBC10 Taylor hid her daughters underneath the covers of a bed as Gordon entered the home. Nancy said she heard gunshots and then confronted Gordon in the living room, striking him with the back of a wooden ax. Police said Gordon then struck Nancy with his gun, before fleeing the scene.
Taylor’s brother was also home at the time of the shooting, according to court documents. He told investigators he was sleeping when he heard an argument between Gordon and Taylor, followed by gunshots. When he exited his room, he found his sister unresponsive and suffering from gunshot wounds and his mother, Nancy, suffering from a head wound.
At that point, he took Aubree and Arianna out of the room where their mother's body lay.
Nancy told NBC10 her daughter was a hero who died protecting her little girls.
“She died right where you’re standing,” Nancy said. “And they were right there.”
Gordon was later arrested hours later after police found him walking the streets of Trenton, New Jersey.
Gordon is now in police custody and he faces a slew of charges including murder, aggravated assault, burglary and other offenses in Pennsylvania, as well as carjacking and weapons offenses in New Jersey.
Nancy is now the official guardian of Aubree and Arianna. She said her family is grateful for fundraisers from community members that helped them pay for funeral costs. She also said the family will begin counseling in a few weeks.
Aubree, meanwhile, is remembering the fun times she had with her mother.
She said her favorite place where her mother took her was the dinosaur park.
Those memories will continue to live on as will the love she has for her mom.
“Mommy takes me everywhere,” Aubree told NBC10. “I love her this much!”
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline by calling 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), visiting www.thehotline.org or texting LOVEIS to 22522.
