Speaking to the Sunday Tribune yesterday, Fine Gael councillor Paddy Smith said the entire community of Ballyjamesduff was "just completely numb" at the news that Thomas Reilly and his two little girls were dead.

Reilly drowned his daughters, six-year-old Megan and five-year-old Kelly, in a bathtub on the first floor of his home at 322 Claremont Avenue, Montclair, in New Jersey. The Irishman then hanged himself with an electrical cord in the attic of the house.

"The family are in shock, the community is in shock, no-one can believe this has happened, " said Smith yesterday. "Tommy was a big man with an even bigger heart. He was full of life. We just cannot understand it."

Smith said he last met Reilly in November, when he appeared in excellent humour.

"Everything was going well for him, " he said.

"He had inherited the farm at home and he had applied for planning permission to build a house on it. I think he was thinking of moving back to Ireland. He obviously had lots of big plans for the future.

"He was involved in everything. When young lads from Ballyjamesduff would go over to the States, he'd pick them up from the airport and set them up with a job and sometimes even get them free accommodation while they got settled in. He was always happy and he loved his little girls more than anything."

The bodies of Reilly and his daughters were discovered on Thursday night, when Reilly's estranged wife, Theresa, came to the house to collect the children. Upon receiving no answer at the door, she called the police.

The officers found the two girls, dressed in shorts and soccer t-shirts, submerged in the bath. Autopsies later revealed they had died from a combination of strangulation and drowning. They did not appear to have put up a struggle. In the attic, the police discovered Reilly hanging from a rafter near a front window. No suicide note was found. Theresa Reilly was kept from entering the home and officers took her aside to break the news.

"The scream she let out, I knew someone very close to her had died, " said Robert Denko, a neighbour who was at the scene. "It was a penetrating scream, a horrible scream. You knew something terrible had taken place."

Theresa and Thomas Reilly had been separated for two months, since Thomas Reilly moved out of the family home to the residence at Claremont Avenue. In May, a judge granted Theresa Reilly a restraining order against her husband following an alleged assault. However, Reilly was allowed to continue to see his daughters on Tuesdays and Thursdays.