Mercedes Antoinette Ashley Ortiz, a 31-year-old Black/African American woman from Milford, Delaware, died in the early morning hours of June 5, 2024, in what authorities investigated as a double homicide. She was found dead inside a home in the Brookstone Trace development on Pebblebrook Drive along with 3-year-old Aloni Truong, who was also from Milford.
Public reports described the deaths as the result of gun violence, and police later identified both Mercedes and Aloni as the victims.
The case began before dawn, around 4:45 a.m., when Milford police were called to the 500 block of South DuPont Boulevard for a report of a man bleeding from his head. Officers and emergency medical personnel found a 31-year-old man with non-life-threatening injuries and transported him to a hospital. As officers investigated, information led them to a home in the 6000 block of Pebblebrook Drive in the Brookstone Trace neighborhood. Inside, they discovered Mercedes and Aloni dead, turning the medical call into a homicide investigation.
Police later arrested Davis Truong, 31, of Milford, in connection with the killings. Reports identified him as Aloni’s father. Milford police said detectives secured an arrest warrant for Truong on the evening of June 5, 2024, the same day the bodies were discovered. He was charged with two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of possession of a deadly weapon during the commission of a felony.
Court and news reports indicated investigators believed Truong shot Mercedes and Aloni before sustaining his own head injury. A neighbor’s doorbell footage reportedly showed Truong at a nearby door around 4:30 a.m., covered in blood, but he was gone by the time the neighbor reached the door. After being treated for his injuries, he was taken into custody.
Truong was presented in Justice of the Peace Court 3, where his bail was set at $2.2 million cash only. He was then turned over to the Delaware Department of Correction. He was scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Sussex County Court of Common Pleas on June 13, 2024.
The motive described in court paperwork was reported as a possible murder-suicide pact, but Mercedes’ mother, Crystal Ortiz-Simpson, publicly rejected that explanation. She said she did not believe her daughter and granddaughter’s deaths were part of any pact and suggested the killings appeared more deliberate than sympathetic. Her grief was sharpened by the fact that Mercedes and Aloni were to be buried together, with family left to reconcile the sudden loss of both a mother and a child.
Mercedes had been born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1992 and was remembered in obituary information as a loving mother and daughter. Her death, along with Aloni’s, left a quiet Milford neighborhood at the center of a devastating criminal case: a mother and small child found dead inside their home, a wounded man connected to them arrested within hours, and a family disputing any suggestion that the violence was anything other than a deliberate act.
