Late in the afternoon on December 15, 2011, deputies in rural Accomack County were sent to a trailer on Sixth Street in the Gargatha area after an emergency call reported a possible suicide. When the first deputy arrived, the scene unfolded into something far worse: five people were found dead inside a rented trailer tucked down a dirt road near Diamond Springs Boulevard, in a sparsely populated pocket of Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
Evelyn Colon Matias, a 27-year-old Puerto Rican woman, was among the dead, along with her two children and the woman who rented the trailer. In the days that followed, authorities publicly identified the victims as Colon Matias; Zaydy Maria Reyes Gonzalez, the tenant; and Colon Matias’s children, Jesus Angel Quintero Colon and Ana Estefani Quintero Colon. Investigators said all were found shot inside the home.
As investigators pieced together what happened, the focus settled on Esteban Quintero Gonzales, the children’s father. Authorities said the evidence and interviews pointed to him forcing his way into the trailer, shooting the four victims inside, and then turning the gun on himself—meaning the suspected shooter was also one of the dead. The sheriff described it as the county’s deadliest scene in at least a decade, and the remains were taken to the medical examiner in Norfolk as identification work continued.
Behind the violence was a family conflict that had not stayed private. Officials said Colon Matias and Quintero Gonzales had been involved in an ongoing custody dispute. Reyes Gonzalez, according to investigators, had been allowing Colon Matias and the children to stay with her in the rented trailer—a small act of help that placed her in the path of the attack. Reyes Gonzalez’s young daughter was reported to have not been with her at the time.
Because the suspected perpetrator died at the scene, there were no arrests, no suspect roundup, and no later courtroom reckoning in the usual sense—no bond hearing, no trial date, no conviction to mark the end of the case. Instead, the official conclusion described an apparent murder-suicide, and the investigation was supported by the Virginia State Police as authorities worked to document what led up to the shootings and to close the case with answers for the families left behind.
