The home was filled with smoke when officers arrived around 10:30 a.m. responding a 911 call of an assault, Assistant Chief Kenneth Corey, the commanding officer of Staten Island, said at a news conference.
Firefighters put out the fire, and the victims were discovered in the same room. They were pronounced dead at the scene, Corey said.
The authorities found a 36-year-old man — believed to be the father of the children — walking along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway around 7:48 a.m., officials said. The man was taken to a hospital for an evaluation.
The woman and the man were believed to be active members of the U.S. military, officials said, although they did not specify what branch.
On Saturday, three men and a woman wearing U.S. Army uniforms stood behind the yellow crime-scene tape and consoled one another. They formed a prayer circle and left after the medical examiner’s office removed the bodies.
Neighbors said that the couple had recently moved to the dead-end street populated with newly constructed row homes and that they mostly kept to themselves.
Mary Jo Kammerer, 63, said she smelled the smoke in the morning and went to see what was going on.
“I thought it was just a small fire at first,” she said. “They put it out right away. But when I saw a lot of police and detectives filling the street, I knew it was something big.”
She said the loss of the toddlers affected her the most.
“They were tiny. It’s so sad. It’s such a bad tragedy,” she said.
Rod Hamed, 59, said neighbors were trying to comprehend the deaths of the children. “It’s shocking, two kids,” Hamed said. “They were both in the Army, nice people. You never expect something like this.”
The police had been called to the home for a previous domestic incident, Corey said. The names of the victims were not released, and the causes of death were yet to be determined.