OAKLAND — All three of the victims in Wednesday night’s shootings grew up in the Waterville area.
Michael Muzerolle, 29, grew up in Oakland and graduated from Messalonskee High School in 2004. The nephew of Oakland police Chief Michael Tracy, Muzerolle was “just your typical, goofy kid,” Tracy said.
“He was part of our family. We love him and miss him,” he added.
Muzerolle’s Facebook page contains photos of him kayaking and on a sailboat.
Muzerolle’s girlfriend, Amanda Bragg, graduated from Winslow High School in 2003 and was “a very bright person, a straight-A student,” according to Jibryne Karter, who dated her in high school.
“She’s just a very bubbly, happy person,” said Karter, who attended Waterville High School and graduated in the same year. “She was all around a wonderful, happy person anyone would be great to have as a friend.”
Bragg was creative and artistic — a skilled drawer — and she was involved in drama club in high school and acted in plays, Karter said.
Karter said he and others were organizing a public candlelight vigil for Sunday night at Head of Falls in Waterville.
Bragg’s sister, Amy DeRosby, also graduated from Winslow High School, according to her Facebook page. On Aug. 14, she posted on her page that she was in a relationship, and that same day, in response to a friend’s post, she said she had not been dating another man for four or five months and added, “I found my husband.”
DeRosby had been living with Herman DeRico in the upstairs apartment at 41 Belgrade Road. Police said DeRico shot and killed DeRosby, Bragg and Muzerolle in the first-floor apartment in the building.
Neighbors in the residential neighborhood that skirts the north tip of Messalonskee Lake, a short walk from downtown, said the group was quiet and kept to themselves. Bragg, DeRosby and DeRico weren’t well known in the community, but neighbors knew Muzerolle as someone who did a lot of odd jobs for people, such as removing snow and fixing small engines.
Jason Thomas, a neighbor, said his children played with 3-year-old Arianna, daughter of Bragg and Muzerolle.
Muzerolle and Bragg lived in the house for the last two years, but DeRico and DeRosby moved in within the last year, according to neighbors.
Neighbors said they often saw DeRico and DeRosby hanging out on the porch or walking their dog.
Chris Perry, who owns a home next to the building where the shootings happened, said he knew Muzerolle, or Mikey, as someone who was a hard worker but didn’t seem to get much steady work. His neighbor always seemed to be tinkering on small engines or vehicles and recently helped fix his snowblower, Perry said.
“He could fix anything that runs,” Perry said.
Vernal Finemore, who lives two doors down from the house, said Muzerolle did yard work and cut wood for him.
He met DeRico when DeRico moved into the house, and the man always said hi when he walked by. “I didn’t know him that well,” Finemore said.
“It’s a sad thing. They were young people. They didn’t have much,” he said.
Perry didn’t know Bragg well. He said Bragg stayed in her house most of the time.
Perry said Arianna is friendly, and he sometimes brought her samples of chocolate milk or strawberry milk from his job at a dairy company. DeRosby and DeRico were also unfamiliar to him, but DeRico “wasn’t someone I would go say ‘hey’ to,” Perry said.
“Aside from the traffic, it’s a quiet neighborhood. People keep to themselves,” Perry said.
A Go Fund Me page was set up Thursday in Arianna’s name, called “Help raise Arianna,” saying now that the girl has lost her parents, she will be raised by her grandmother and other relatives.
“She will need many things in life … and a future,” the page states. “The family now has to bury two daughters together … please help if you can to make this horrid and unbearable situation a bit easier to endure by donating whatever you can.”
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