A 33-year-old man who allegedly stabbed his three young sons inside an SUV in South Los Angeles was charged Tuesday with three counts of murder.
The murder charges against Luiz Fuentes include the special-circumstance allegation of multiple murders, making him eligible for a possible death sentence, according to the District Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors will decide later whether to seek death.
Fuentes is scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday in downtown Los Angeles.
Fuentes was found around 7 a.m. Wednesday when a passerby saw him sitting in the front seat of the SUV that was parked in the 300 block of East 32nd Street. The man approached the vehicle and saw the children’s bodies inside. Fuentes was covered in blood and suffering from stab wounds, police said. They believe he stabbed himself.
He was hospitalized, then booked on suspicion of murder two days later.
Coroner’s officials identified the children as Alexander Fuentes, 8, Juan Fuentes, 9, and Luis Fuentes, 10.
It was unclear what precipitated Wednesday’s attack, although a pastor said during a vigil Wednesday night that Fuentes was having financial problems, and that he was living in the SUV with the boys.
The Los Angeles Times reported that the county Department of Children and Family Services is investigating whether social workers adequately probed some allegations that the boys were at risk, and whether staff responded appropriately to what they learned.
The children’s mother died in 2008.
The Times reported that Fuentes had been suffering from depression.
A hotline call to DCFS in September 2010 reporting abuse of the children led social workers to determine that the allegation was true, the newspaper reported, citing anonymous officials with the department.
Lawyers for the DCFS petitioned the juvenile court to open a case, officials told The Times, and the boys remained in the father’s home until the case was closed about a year later. Two more hotline calls alleging physical abuse were made in April 2014, sources told The Times. Social workers who investigated the allegations finally marked the claims “inconclusive” in October.
— City News Service