Shaquela Titley of Deer Park pleads guilty in fatal stabbing of Marie Mille, ex-boyfriend's mother, DA says

A Deer Park woman accused of fatally stabbing her ex-boyfriend’s 85-year-old mother and attempting to kill her ex-boyfriend pleaded guilty Tuesday to first-degree manslaughter and second-degree attempted murder in Suffolk criminal court in Riverhead, District Attorney Ray Tierney said. 

Shaquela Titley, 31, faces up to 30 years in prison when she appears for sentencing before Supreme Court Justice Timothy Mazzei on Oct. 5. Her attorney, Jonathan Manley of Hauppauge, did not immediately return a call for comment. 

According to court documents and the defendant’s admissions during her guilty plea allocution, Titley stabbed Marie Mille to death at Mille’s home on Smith Street in Deer Park Dec. 23, 2021.

Titley, who had been renting an apartment in Millie’s home for about nine months, was apparently upset because Mille and her son, Joseph Mille, were not going to renew her lease, officials said. Joseph Mille was Titley’s former boyfriend, police said.

“This was a horrific killing of a defenseless elderly woman and family matriarch who didn’t stand a chance to fight against the rage that this defendant unleashed on her,” Tierney said in a statement.

Joseph Mille was not at the home when Titley attacked his mother, Tierney said. He returned to the home later that day to find Marie Mille dead and covered with blood, Tierney said 

Titley then attacked her ex-boyfriend, stabbing him multiple times before he fought his way out of the house and fled to a neighbor’s home, according to the district attorney’s statement.