Troy Victorino and Jerone Hunter had been among a group squatting in the vacant home of Erin Belanger's grandparents, using the property as a party house while the owners were away. When Belanger moved to Florida to look after the home, she had deputies evict them and boxed up the belongings they left behind, including an Xbox console and clothing. Victorino, who claimed affiliation with the Latin Kings gang, took the eviction as a personal insult. He recruited three accomplices -- Robert Cannon, Jerone Hunter, and Michael Salas -- and told them the attack would also give them a chance to settle a separate score with another person they believed would be at the house. That person was not home that night. The four men, reportedly inspired by the 2003 crime film Wonderland, armed themselves with aluminum baseball bats and knives.

The attackers stormed the Telford Lane house and methodically killed everyone inside. Jonathan Gleason was fatally stabbed in the neck while sitting in a recliner. Francisco "Flaco" Ayo-Roman was beaten with an aluminum bat. Tito Gonzalez was bludgeoned and stabbed multiple times in the chest and stomach. Anthony Vega was attacked in the master bedroom near his girlfriend, Michelle Ann Nathan, who hid in a closet until she was discovered and killed. The family's pet dachshund, George, was also killed. Six people died that night in what Seventh Circuit Judge William A. Parsons would later call a "conscienceless" and "unnecessarily torturous" act.

All four men were found guilty in August 2006. Judge Parsons told them during sentencing: "You have not only forfeited your right to live among us, you have forfeited your right to live at all." Victorino and Hunter received the death penalty, while Cannon and Salas were sentenced to life in prison without parole. Cannon pleaded guilty and received six life terms for the murders, plus additional sentences for armed burglary, conspiracy, abuse of dead bodies, and cruelty to an animal. The death sentences of Victorino and Hunter were overturned on appeal in June 2017, but prosecutors pursued the death penalty again, and on November 3, 2025, both men were resentenced to death.

The massacre exposed a dangerous gap in Florida law. Victorino had been jailed many times for assault and had spent eight of the eleven years before the killings behind bars. At the time of the attack, he was on probation and facing a battery charge that constituted a probation violation. State law allowed, but did not require, his probation officer Richard Burrow to arrest him on the spot. Burrow chose to let Victorino leave his office and planned to request an arrest warrant the next day. That delay gave Victorino the window to carry out the killings. In response, the Florida legislature passed SB-146 on February 23, 2007, creating the designation "violent felony offenders of special concern." Under the new law, such offenders cannot be released from jail until a court hearing determines whether they violated their supervision and whether they pose a danger to the community.