Coronavirus Kills 3 Members of Close-Knit New Jersey Family, 4 Others Hospitalized: 'I Am Numb' Says Daughter

At a typical family dinner of the large, close-knit Fusco family, there easily could be 50 people at matriarch Grace Fusco’s Freehold, New Jersey, home. And on Tuesday night, March 3, many of the 73-year-old Fusco’s 11 children and other relatives gathered to eat.

But just over two weeks after the gathering, the coronavirus has tragically devastated this close-knit family. On Wednesday night, Grace died on the same day as her oldest son Carmine, and four days earlier her oldest child Rita Fusco Jackson, 56, had died. 

Four family members remain at CentraState Medical Center in Freehold: two daughters and two sons, with three sedated, on ventilators and critical, Roseann Paradiso Fodero, a first cousin of Grace’s and the family attorney, tells PEOPLE. Grace, who also had been sedated and on a respirator, never knew that her two oldest children had died, says Paradiso Fodera.

“I am numb, I don’t believe what is going on,” Bridget Fusco Betlow,  52, Grace’s fifth born, told PEOPLE a few hours before her mother’s death. “I am sitting here with my mother’s rosary that she gave me the last time she visited me and praying, saying ‘God help me, give us some kind of answer.’ “

It’s a mystery why the disease has ravaged this family, since they believe “no one had an underlying medical condition,” Paradiso Fodero, tells PEOPLE. 

As the family deals with this tragedy, 19 members of the clan are quarantined in their own homes as they anxiously await coronavirus test results they took last Friday and Saturday. 

“They need for this test to get done and get processed, so we know who has it, so we can go together and mourn together in my mother’s house,” says Fusco Betlow, who lives in Indiana. 

Paradiso Fodera has been in contact with lawmakers to help coordinate care and help obtaining the test results since a week has passed with no word. 

“The family wants the CDC and the NIH’s cooperation to perform an autopsy on Rita,” Paradiso Fodera says, “so they can use this as a tool to explore a better protocol to avoid another healthy person from succumbing to this virus.” 

Rita’s daughter, Grace, 30, of Tom’s River, New Jersey, who is pregnant, learned she’s positive for the coronavirus but is not symptomatic. She was tested at another facility and got the test answer back in 2 days, says Fusco Betlow.

In the days following the big family dinner on March 3 at Grace’s sprawling house on over three acres, Rita had shortness of breath and her oxygen level was low. Meanwhile, her brother, Vincent, 53, thought he had the flu and was admitted to the hospital on Monday, March 9.

The next day, Grace and her children Rita, Carmine, 56, Antonia, 55, Joseph, 49, and Maria, 43,  were all admitted with the same symptoms. (Carmine lived in Pennsylvania and was hospitalized there.) Says Paradiso Fodera: “They all became gravely ill.”

That same day, March 10, the family learned that John Brennan — a horse trainer and close business associate of Carmine, also a horse trainer, and Vincent, a harness race driver — had died of the coronavirus in another New Jersey hospital, says Fusco Betlow. Brennan is the state’s first coronavirus death. 

This prompted the Fusco family to get doctors to test their hospitalized family members. The positive result for Rita came back after her death. The married mom of three was devoted to St. Robert Bellarmine, the family’s longtime Roman Catholic church, where she taught religious classes, says Fusco Betlow.

“She always had a faith in God,” says Fusco Betlow. “And did a lot for the community and the church. Rita loved family and her kids, that was her life. Rita was my sister, she was my friend.” 

In 1975, says Fuscow Betlow, her parents moved from Brooklyn to the horse country of Freehold, where her father Vincenzo Fusco was a horse trainer and harness race driver. Older brother Carmine, of Bath, Pensylvania, who passed away Wednesday morning, followed his father into the harness race industry, and trained horses. 

“Carmine was our rock, our protector, he took care of us and he took care of my mom when my dad passed (in 2017),” says Bridget. “If you needed him, he was there.”

Grace had 27 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, and filled her home of 45 years with family, with 67 people gathered there on Christmas Eve.

“Grace was a very faith-filled human being,” says Paradiso Fodera, “and her strong religious beliefs that she instilled among all her children will be the one factor that will enable them to get through this.”

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