EDITH AND DIANA MORENO - 11 and 17 yo (2009) - Los Angeles CA

The family of a woman arrested on suspicion fatally slashing her two
daughters' throats says she had recently lost her job and was briefly
hospitalized for stress.Antonia Gomez was arrested in Sun Valley Friday and is recovering from knife wounds to her wrists and upper body.Relatives tell the Los Angeles Times the 38-year-old Gomez was unable to make mortgage payments and had recently moved in with her mother. They say Gomez was afraid she might have to move back to Mexico.

Officers responding to a 911 call on Wednesday found 12-year-old Edith Moreno and her 17-year-old sister Diana Moreno dead with multiple stab wounds.

A woman has pleaded not guilty to killing her two daughters by slashing their throats in their Los Angeles house.

Antonia Gomez entered her plea Thursday to two counts of murder and
is eligible for the death penalty if convicted. She’s being held
without bail.
Prosecutors say Gomez stabbed her daughters, ages 11 and 17, on Sept. 2 before cutting her own arms.
The case is one of several this month in Southern California in which six children were stabbed, four of them fatally.
Similar attacks occurred Wednesday when a 5-year-old and 3-year-old
were allegedly wounded by their mother in Orange County. Authorities
also found a 12-year-old boy and his 7-year-old sister stabbed to death
the same day in Ventura County in what could be a murder-suicide by the
father.

Mother who allegedly slashed the throats of her two daughters faces murder charges
Daily News Wire Services
Posted: 09/09/2009 01:53:46 PM PDT
Updated: 09/09/2009 02:05:03 PM PDT

37-year-old woman who allegedly slashed the throats of her two daughters at the family's North Hollywood home then tried to kill herself was charged today with two counts of murder.

The charges against Antonia Fuentes Gomez include the special circumstance of multiple murders, which could make her eligible for the death penalty.

Prosecutors said they will decide later whether to seek capital punishment. Gomez is expected to be arraigned today in Van Nuys Superior Court.

She is accused of killing her two daughters -- Edith, 11, and Diana, 16 - - on Sept. 2 by slashing their throats at the family's home in the 7800 block of Irvine Avenue. According to police, Gomez then tried to kill herself by cutting her arms.

Police and prosecutors have not said what may have motivated the killings.

Police said Gomez also has a 14-year-old child who was not at the home at the time of the killings.

Gomez is being held in lieu of $2 million bail, but prosecutors were expected to ask that she be held without bail.http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_13299786

http://www.dailynews.com/ci_13353750?IADID=Search-www.dailynews.com-www.dailynews.com

Mother pleads not guilty to slashing her two daughters' throats
Associated Press
Posted: 09/17/2009 11:47:07 AM PDT
Updated: 09/17/2009 11:55:12 AM PD

North Hollywood woman has pleaded not guilty to slashing her two daughters' throats in their home.

The case against Antonia Gomez is one of a few this month in Southern California in which six children were stabbed, four of them fatally.

The mother entered her plea Thursday to two counts of murder and is eligible for the death penalty if convicted. She's being held on no bail.

Prosecutors say Gomez stabbed her 11-year-old and 17-year-old daughters on Sept. 2 before cutting her own arms.

Similar attacks occurred Wednesday when a 5-year-old and 3-year-old were allegedly wounded by their mother in Orange County.

Authorities also found a 12-year-old boy and his 7-year-old sister stabbed to death the same day in Ventura County in what could be a murder-suicide by the father.

http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-women-stabbed,0,2504284.story
VAN NUYS -- A 37-year old mother pleaded not guilty today to capital murder charges in the brutal stabbings of her 12-year-old and 17-year-old daughters.

Police say Antonia Gomez killed two of her three daughters on September 2 by slashing their throats and then tried to kill herself.

She is eligible for the death penalty if convicted.

Police say Gomez' younger daughter, Edith Moreno, was found in a house in the 7800 block of Irvine Avenue; her older sister, Diana Moreno, was found in a converted garage in the back of the property.

Los Angeles police Capt. Ivan Minsal says officers found the bodies after responding to a 911 call.

All three lived in the converted garage with their grandmother.
She wasn't home at the time of the deadly attacks.

Gomez was unable to make mortgage payments on her home and had moved back in with her mother, relatives said.

She reportedly worried that she would have to move back to Mexico.

Family members said Gomez had recently lost her job and was briefly hospitalized for stress.

The woman's 14-year-old daughter was taken into protective custody.

Gomez is being held without bail.

Gruesome Details Emerge in Hearing for Mother Accused of Slashing Her 2 Daughters to Death
The judge calls recess when defendant Antonia Gomez Fuentes breaks down during a preliminary hearing

June 3, 2011

A Van Nuys Superior Court judge listened to several hours of gruesome testimony Thursday in the preliminary hearing of a North Hollywood woman accused of stabbing her two young daughters to death on Sept. 2, 2009.

Judge Leland Harris agreed to call an early recess, nearly three hours into the proceedings, after defendant Antonia Gomez Fuentes appeared “visibly upset,” as the judge put it.

Fuentes was overcome by emotion as an LAPD detective testified about a conversation he had with the 39-year-old woman shortly after police found her daughters slain in their home in the 7800 block of Irvine Avenue, where Fuentes was found covered in blood.

Detective Mario Santana testified that he visited Fuentes in a local hospital later that day and that she confessed to luring her 11-year-old daughter Edith into the front room of the house by promising to play hide and seek. Santana said that Fuentes then admitted hitting the child on the head with a glass bottle, hoping to knock the girl out, so that Edith would not feel her mother slashing her throat.

The child did not lose consciousness, and instead pleaded with her mother, telling her mother she loved her, till Fuentes managed to slit the child’s throat, Santana said.

According to Santana, Fuentes then told him she went into the home’s detached garage apartment where Fuentes and her daughters were actually living at the time. There, he said, Fuentes stabbed to death her 17-year-old daughter, Diana.

According to Santana, Fuentes next said she took some pills and slit her own wrists.

Later, in cross-examination, Fuentes’ public defender, Michael Gottlieb, painted Fuentes as a woman with severe mental problems who had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for years.

Gottlieb asked Santana to recall several parts of his taped interrogation in which Fuentes said that she killed her daughters because she did not want to leave them alone. The detective recalled Fuentes saying that there was no food for the girls, that she had no job and that "their faces looked so sad."

A third daughter, age 14, survived. She was at a nearby library at the time of the slayings and is now under state protection. In testimony, Santana said Fuentes waited for her third daughter to leave the house because that daughter was larger than the other girls and feisty.

“I don’t doubt that she was depressed,” prosecutor Lisa Tanner told North Hollywood Patch. “But this was a cold, calculated act. She planned, prepared and wanted to take her life. She did not have the right to make that decision for her daughters."


Fuentes, who according to her attorney is just 4-foot-5, appeared in court in a yellow jail jumpsuit, her hair in a pony tail, a chain around her waist. She listened to the proceedings through a Spanish interpreter.

Los Angeles police homicide Detective Pat Barron has told Patch that Fuentes and her family had fallen on hard times. The family had moved into the converted garage so they could rent out their house, but their tenants had moved out. The house, owned by her mother, was in foreclosure and Fuentes had recently lost her job, Barron said.

At the end of Thursday's hearing, the judge decided that there was enough evidence to put Fuentes on trial. She is being held without bail, and her arraignment is set for June 16. Prosecutors have not yet decided whether to ask for the death penalty.

http://northhollywood.patch.com/articles/gruesome-details-emerge-in-hearing-for-mother-accused-of-slashing-her-2-daughters-to-death

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