A young man's highway confession after a chase in Louisiana led investigators to a home here early Friday, where one woman was found beaten to death with a hammer and her daughter bludgeoned.

Just after 2 a.m. Friday, Port Orange police -- alerted to the possible killings -- found Laura Jean Hill, 53, dead in an upstairs bedroom of her home on Sunset Cove Drive and her daughter Angela Hill, 25, critically injured but still alive in another bedroom.

The two women had been beaten with a hammer, West Baton Rouge, La., Sheriff Mike Cazes told The Advocate newspaper of Baton Rouge.

It's not clear which one of the suspects -- identified as 24-year-old Tyler McClain and 25-year-old Bradley Suntich, both of Port Orange -- killed Laura Hill or which one confessed to the murder.

Assistant Port Orange Police Chief Wayne Miller said two detectives arrived in Baton Rouge on Friday afternoon and would question both men.

McClain, police and friends of the victims said, was Angela Hill's ex-boyfriend.

Late Friday afternoon, Suntich was being held by Louisiana State Police in Baton Rouge on traffic charges stemming from the chase. McClain was at Earl K. Long Hospital because he took several pills on the car trip from Florida to Louisiana, Trooper Russell Graham said.

"He said he wanted to kill himself," Cazes said.

The men were riding in Laura Hill's Toyota sport utility vehicle, police said. Troopers chased them along Interstate 10 early Friday because the license tag on the SUV was improperly displayed, Cazes said.

Suntich, the driver, refused to stop on the interstate and reached 100 mph while taking police and state troopers on a 12-mile ride through Iberville Parish near West Baton Rouge, Cazes said. The pair pitched drugs from the vehicle during the chase, which finally ended on a dead-end street in Port Allen.

As Suntich tried to turn the SUV around at the end of the road, he cut off a trooper who was behind him, and the trooper crashed into the driver's side door, Graham said.

Police did not immediately release a motive in the case. In Port Orange, Miller said McClain had lived on and off with the Hills at 3869 Sunset Cove. Friends said the young man had a rocky relationship with Angela.

"I loved Angela. She was always a sweetheart," said Alyssia Jaramillo, who worked with the young woman for three years at a Wendy's restaurant on Dunlawton Avenue. "She was just one of those girls you could call up out of the blue, and if she could give you the shirt off her back, she'd give you the shirt off her back."

Jaramillo said McClain was often abusive toward Angela Hill -- who beat a drug problem and cleaned herself up -- but she went back to him time after time.

It was unclear whether they were dating again recently.

When police first arrived at the Sunset Cove house shortly after 3 a.m. Friday, they knocked on the door but got no answer. Officers heard a knocking noise coming from inside the house, and they broke in, Miller said. That's where they found the two women.

Angela Hill was taken to Halifax Health Medical Center, where she underwent surgery and was listed in critical but stable condition in the intensive care unit Friday night, Miller said. It was unclear how long she lay injured in the house. Figuring in the time it took the suspects to reach Baton Rouge, investigators said she appeared to have been there several hours.

Laura Hill, a manager at the Beall's department store on Granada Boulevard in Ormond Beach, was a proud grandmother who posted several happy pictures of her grandchildren in an online photo gallery. Her most recent Facebook status, posted several months ago, said "life is too short to be anything but happy."

"We all knew her very well, and it's just such an unfortunate situation," Beall's operations manager Marlene Goodman said Friday night.

Both McClain and Suntich have lengthy arrest records in Volusia County, and each has served two stints in prison, according to state and local court records.

Suntich was just released in April after serving four years on a 2007 conviction of burglary and purse-snatching. His first prison term was in 2004, at the age of 18, when he was sentenced to a year for animal fighting. When not in prison, Suntich has been in and out of the Volusia County Branch Jail several times on a variety of lesser charges.

His close friend, Shai Ellis, who said she grew up with Suntich and considers him a brother, broke down in tears Friday upon hearing of the attack. She said Suntich, who was all but raised by her aunt in South Daytona, lived with her briefly after leaving prison and had been trying to straighten out his life.

"That's my brother, and I'm upset and I feel sorry for him," Ellis said. "But if he knew, and he was involved (in Hill's death), he gets what he deserves. That's the nastiest thing anyone in this world can do to someone."

McClain was also 18 when he went to prison for the first time, on a 2005 burglary conviction. He was imprisoned again on another burglary conviction in 2007 and was released in 2009. Between 2004 and this year, he has been arrested 10 times in Volusia County on charges ranging from disorderly conduct to battery to robbery.