Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco is defending his department's actions following a domestic violence call to the house Adam Matos was living in with his ex-girlfriend Megan Brown and her parents.

Matos now faces first-degree murder charges for the deaths of Brown, her parents Margaret and Greg Brown, and her boyfriend, Nicholas Leonard.

Reports show Brown called for help on Aug. 28 before she died, and deputies responded to the house for an aggravated assault report. 

However, on Tuesday Nocco said a warrant for Matos’ arrest in that earlier incident wasn’t filed until after deputies found the four bodies, a week after Brown's Aug. 28 call.

According to the deputy's report from Aug. 28, Brown told him her ex-boyfriend, Matos, was angry with her because she'd been out all night. Brown said Matos backed her in to a corner, held a knife to her throat, and threatened to kill her.  She said her hand was cut when she put it between her neck and the knife.

The report states the deputy noticed blood on the wall, photographed her injury that matched her story, and took the knife as evidence.

The deputy noted in the report that he had given Brown a victim's rights booklet. Nocco said Brown was offered information about area domestic violence shelters.  With no other witnesses, the deputy decided he wanted to wait to talk to Matos before doing anything else.

"For our deputy on scene, let me tell you, he was trying to do the right thing. He wanted to do a full investigation, the suspect was not there. He wanted to get information, the suspect had left. That's why he had people out there circling the area,” Nocco said.

The sheriff's office said they first responded on August 28th at 6 a.m. The deputy talked to Megan and took the report, and several deputies unsuccessfully searched the neighborhood for Matos. 

At 9 a.m. they were called back, that time by Brown's current boyfriend, who was reporting the same incident.

Sheriff’s office officials also said between the first and second time the deputy went to the Brown house on Aug. 28, Matos had called Brown hundreds of times. However, investigators didn't find that out until the homicide investigation.

"Did anything leading up to this point now lead us to believe he would kill four people? Absolutely not,” Nocco said. "But did our deputies do everything they could? Absolutely. With the circumstances and information we had, we did everything we could."

On Sept. 4, deputies went to the house for a welfare check and found the bodies of the four victims. That’s when an arrest warrant was filed for Matos for that original Aug. 28 call on charges of aggravated assault.

Nocco said no deputies went to the home after Aug. 28 to follow up on the case. The next time they were there was for the welfare check.

Nocco said they don't have the staff to hand off certain cases to detectives. The deputy who took the report wanted to be proactive and told his supervisor he wanted to work the case himself, Nocco said.

An arrest affidavit shows that during the homicide investigation, a neighbor told authorities he saw Matos at the house every day until the day before the bodies were found. 

Matos is also accused of ordering pizza to the house with a victim’s credit card, and even selling the Brown family’s dog to a Craigslist customer who came to the Brown home to purchase the dog.

Bay News 9 asked Sheriff Nocco if anything could have, or should have been done, to track Matos down sooner, or to follow up on the aggravated assault allegations. Nocco said his deputies followed proper protocol.

"You know, you always look at hindsight - could've, should've, would've," he said. "That's every day that's every time, that's every case that goes on. There's cases going on right now that people are going to second-guess us on. They're going to play Monday morning quarterback. This is a horrible situation. Four people died, it's a horrible tragedy. But we do what we do. We do what we can out there. And it's unfortunate that this homicide occurred but Adam Matos is the one who did the homicide."

Deputies say they're still trying to piece together the timeline of the murders but documents show the last time anyone saw or heard from the victims was on the 28th, the same day the domestic violence incident allegedly occurred.