Slaying of mom in N. Valley Stream a mystery

One neighbor thought it was a truck that had backfired.

But the sound that shattered a quiet night on Barry Drive in North Valley Stream Monday proved to be deadly gunfire, Nassau County police said.

In the driveway of one home, Jeanmarie Beaudouin, 37, a married mother of three young girls, was found shot several times in the upper torso.

Beaudouin was still alive as medics rushed her to the hospital, but she was pronounced dead a short time later at Franklin Hospital Medical Center in Valley Stream. Now police are trying to determine who shot her and why.

VIDEO: Click here to watch reactions from family and neighbors

Nassau police spokesman Det. Lt. Kevin Smith said Beaudouin was returning home when she was shot in the driveway at about 11 p.m.

Police said the unemployed Beaudouin lived in a basement apartment with her husband and three daughters, ages 3, 6 and 10, in a neighborhood just north of the Southern State Parkway.

Her husband and children were home at the time she was shot.

"I thought it was a truck that went down the block just backfired," said Patricia Larkin, 62, a nurse-nutritionist who lives two houses away from the crime scene. She said she was getting ready for bed and was reciting the rosary when she heard what she later came to realize were gunshots - about five of them.

A few minutes later, she said, she heard emergency sirens and looked outside to see lights and police running "back and forth," she said.

All day Tuesday, yellow police tape blocked off the crime scene. Detectives were working out of a mobile command truck parked nearby, and investigators combed through bushes and raked the ground near the driveway for evidence.

Smith would not comment on suspects.

"We're looking at all avenues, as we usually do," Smith said at the scene. "We explore relationships that people have and circumstances in their lives that might have led to this."