Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

San Diego Shooting: Man Kills Estranged Wife and 3 Sons, Officials Say

The woman had gotten a restraining order against the man the day before the shooting.

Officers at the scene of a shooting that killed five people in San Diego, Calif., on Saturday. Credit...John Wilkens/San Diego Union-Tribune

Less than 24 hours after a woman got a restraining order against her estranged husband, he came to her home in San Diego on Saturday and fatally shot her and three of their children before turning the gun on himself, the police said.

When police arrived at the home on Saturday morning, they found the parents and four children — ages 3, 5, 9 and 11 — all with gunshot wounds. The 3-year-old and the parents were dead at the scene, and two of the other boys died at the hospital.

One of the children was in surgery on Saturday afternoon, the police said, adding that they were waiting to identify the victims to give the family time to process their deaths.

Officers raced to the home, in the Paradise Hills neighborhood of San Diego, after someone called 911 shortly before 7 a.m. The caller did not speak, but a dispatcher heard people arguing in the background and someone being asked to leave, Lt. Matt Dobbs of the San Diego Police Department said at a news conference. As officers were driving to the house, a relative of the family who lives nearby called to report that he had heard gunshots.

From outside the home, officers saw a small child covered in blood. They smashed a window and crawled inside. Some of those officers had only recently become parents themselves, said David Nisleit, the police chief.

“As a husband and a father, this incident is very difficult to even think about,” he said.

The police had responded to the same address earlier this month and found the two adults arguing over a set of tools. The man was asking the woman for the tools, but left after the police arrived, they said. Officers gave the woman information on how to get a restraining order.

Lieutenant Dobbs said that the woman appeared to have obtained the order on Friday, and that the police believed the man had been aware of it before carrying out the killings using a handgun.

The family was found in a home on the 2100 block of Flintridge Drive, a residential street in the Paradise Hills neighborhood. The home sits just a few blocks from an elementary school. Local television broadcasts showed that police had cordoned off part of the street with yellow tape.

Monica Montgomery, a San Diego councilwoman who represents Paradise Hills, called the killings an “unfathomable tragedy.”

“As this story makes national headlines, we all grapple with the horror of the loss of these precious lives,” Ms. Montgomery said.

In more than half of all shootings in which a gunman kills at least four people, one of the victims is a partner, former partner or family member, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit that advocates for gun control. The Center for Disease Control reported that nearly half of all women who are killed in the United States are killed by a current or former male partner.

Aimee Ortiz contributed reporting and Amy Osorio contributed research.

Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs reports on national news. He is from upstate New York and previously reported in Baltimore, Albany, and Isla Vista, Calif. More about Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 27 of the New York edition with the headline: Estranged Husband Kills Wife and Three Children. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT