“She was 18. Home for Thanksgiving break. Knocked on her ex’s door with a box of his old hoodies… 25 minutes later she was dead on his kitchen floor, shotgun blast through the chest. He put the gun in his own mouth, pulled the trigger… and SURVIVED to be charged with murder.”

Long Island is in absolute shock tonight. The prom queen ballerina with the million-dollar smile. The 17-year-old Marine recruit who swore he’d love her forever. One breakup. One shotgun. Zero happy endings.

Friends are now spilling the texts nobody was ever supposed to see:

“If you leave me I have nothing left to live for.”
“I’d rather we both die than watch you with someone else.”
3 a.m. meltdowns, showing up at her college dorm uninvited, deleted suicide posts…

She laughed it off: “He’s just heartbroken. I’ll be quick.” Her last words to her mom? “Going to drop his stuff, back in 30.”

She never came back.

The screenshots are chilling. The truth is worse. Full timeline + the messages that predicted everything →

It was supposed to be the start of a happy holiday week. Instead, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving became the day a Long Island community lost one of its brightest stars in a hail of gunfire inside a suburban home.

Emily Rose Finn, 18, a SUNY Oneonta freshman and lifelong ballerina, was shot once in the chest with a 12-gauge shotgun inside the Nesconset home of her ex-boyfriend, 17-year-old Austin Lynch, on November 26, 2025. Lynch then turned the weapon on himself in an apparent murder-suicide attempt that failed — he survived a self-inflicted gunshot to the face and, after turning 18 in the hospital, now faces second-degree murder charges.

Suffolk County Police and District Attorney Ray Tierney confirmed the basic timeline Thursday afternoon: Emily arrived voluntarily around 10:45 a.m. to return personal items after a breakup that friends say had turned increasingly volatile. Roughly 25 minutes later, two shotgun blasts echoed through the normally quiet neighborhood. Austin’s parents returned from errands to discover the unimaginable scene in their kitchen.

“No forced entry. No 911 calls from that address in the past. No prior arrests for either teenager,” Tierney told reporters. “On paper, this looked like the all-American high-school sweetheart story. But something went horribly wrong.”

Emily and Austin had dated for three-and-a-half years, meeting as freshmen at Sayville High School. Classmates describe a relationship that started sweet — football games, beach bonfires, matching prom poses — but began fraying when Emily left for college in August 2025 while Austin stayed local, working and preparing for Marine Corps boot camp in January 2026.

Multiple friends, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is active, told The Post that Emily ended the relationship by phone in early November, citing distance and a desire to experience college life without long-distance pressure. Austin, they say, spiraled.

“He was sending 50–60 messages a day,” one close friend recalled. “Begging her to get back together, saying he’d quit the Marines, talking about how life wasn’t worth living without her. She blocked him on Snapchat, but he’d make new accounts or text from his mom’s phone.”

Another friend shared screenshots (now in the hands of detectives) of messages that grew darker in tone:

“You’re really gonna throw away everything we had?”
“I can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t breathe without you.”
“Sometimes I think we should just end it all together.”

Despite the red flags, Emily agreed to one final in-person exchange of belongings during Thanksgiving break. Text messages recovered by police show her writing the night before: “I’ll come by tomorrow morning, leave the box, and we can both move on. No drama.”

Detectives say security-camera footage from neighboring homes shows Emily pulling into the driveway in her family’s blue Honda Civic at 10:44 a.m. She is seen walking to the front door carrying a small box. The door opens, she steps inside. No one leaves until police and ambulances swarm the block shortly after 11:10 a.m.

Inside, investigators found the shotgun — legally registered to Austin’s father — had been retrieved from an upstairs bedroom closet. One spent shell casing was on the kitchen floor. Emily was pronounced dead at the scene. Austin was airlifted to Stony Brook University Hospital in critical condition with massive facial trauma. Surgeons managed to stabilize him; he turned 18 on November 27 and was immediately arraigned bedside on murder charges.

As of December 2, Lynch remains hospitalized under 24-hour guard. His attorney, Robert Gottlieb, has declined comment beyond asking for privacy.

The Finn family has stayed out of the public eye, but grief has poured in from every corner of Suffolk County. A GoFundMe verified by family friends has topped $107,000. Hundreds of mourners wearing pink — Emily’s signature color — attended calling hours Saturday and her funeral Mass Monday at St. Lawrence the Martyr in West Sayville.

At the American Ballet Studio in Bayport, where Emily danced for 15 years and taught the youngest classes, pink ribbons now cover every tree and railing. Studio owner Lanora Truglio choked up telling Newsday, “Those little 5- and 6-year-olds keep asking when Miss Emily is coming back to fix their buns. We don’t have an answer.”

Sayville High School, class of 2025, held a moment of silence and announced the creation of the Emily Finn Memorial Scholarship for a graduating senior pursuing dance or education. SUNY Oneonta has flown its flag at half-staff and offered counseling to the entire freshman class.

On social media, #EmilyFinn has been trending regionally, with former classmates posting prom photos, Nutcracker clips, and tearful tributes alongside growing anger over teen dating violence and gun access. One widely shared post read: “She was trying to be kind. He was planning murder. Never tell girls to ‘be nice’ when their gut says run.”

Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine and several state lawmakers have scheduled a joint press conference next week to discuss expanding youth intimate-partner violence prevention programs and reviewing firearm storage laws when minors are in the home.

For now, the pink ribbons keep appearing — on mailboxes, car antennas, even the goalposts at Sayville High. They stretch all the way from Emily’s childhood home in West Sayville to the quiet cul-de-sac in Nesconset where her future was stolen in broad daylight.

Emily Rose Finn is survived by her parents, two younger brothers, and a community that says it will never forget the girl who danced through life with a smile — until one final act of kindness turned fatal.