RICHARD JR and EMMA ROSOVICH - 17 months, 4 yo (8/12) - / Charged: Mother Perla Morales - Tucson AZ

Two children dead in double homicide, Az

TUCSON (KGUN9-TV)- Tucson police say two young children are dead and their wounded mother appears to have caused their deaths.

Just after 7:00 p.m. Saturday, the Tucson Police Department received a call about a shooting in the 900 block of west Calle Colado, according to Sgt. Maria Hawke with TPD.

After arriving on scene, officers discovered that 17-month-old Richard Rosovich Jr. and 4-year-old Emma Rosovich were suffering from injuries caused by gun shot.

The children's mother, 25-year-old Perla Morales was also suffering from gun shot wounds.

Emergency responders from the Tucson Fire Department responded to the scene to provide medical treatment, but the 17-month-old male child was pronounced dead at the scene, according to Hawke.

The 4-year-old female child was taken to the hospital where she ultimately succumbed to her injuries.

Investigators believe the young mother, who was home alone with the children Saturday evening, grabbed a handgun and shot both of the children, according to Hawke.

She appeared to have shot herself as well, but her injuries were not life-threatening.

Morales was released from the hospital and has been arrested and booked into the Pima County jail on two counts of first-degree murder, according to Hawke.

No other people are considered suspects at this point in the investigation.

Tucson Police are withholding the mother's motive for shooting the children for investigative reasons, according to Hawke.

http://www.kgun9.com/news/local/165909266.htm...

Father struggles to make sense of children’s deaths

By Sean Holstege The Republic | azcentral.com Sun Oct 21, 2012 12:23 AM


Perla Caroline Morales is accused of a seemingly inexplicable crime.

Prosecutors say the 26-year-old Tucson mother shot to death her 4-year-old daughter, Emma Rosovich, and her 17-month-old son, Richard Rosovich Jr.

She is charged with two counts of murder and is in jail awaiting trial. She pleaded not guilty, but described to police how she shot the girl, then the boy from 2 feet away. Then she slit her wrists and neck.

Emma rests in a grave so fresh that it’s identified by a paper marker, and backhoe tire tracks crisscross the dirt above her. The ashes of Richard Jr. are in an urn inside the family’s home a couple of miles away.

Their father, Richard Rosovich Sr., is trying to raise money for a proper headstone for Emma.

“The kids were beautiful kids, and she was a beautiful mom,” Rosovich said. “She wasn’t a monster. She did a monstroful thing.”

Asked why she may have killed her children, Rosovich just shakes his head: “I don’t know. It’s crazy.”

Through her attorney, Morales declined The Arizona Republic’s request for an interview.

Arizona Child Protective Services listed the Rosovich children among a dozen who died this year in suspected child-abuse deaths.
After a high number of such cases, CPS has been under pressure to reform, but the caseload shows no signs of abating.

It’s easy to spot the family’s bungalow in a gritty south Tucson neighborhood. There are crosses in front.

Two of the crosses are adorned with pink and white garlands and surrounded by candles, photos of the children and their favorite toys — a stuffed toy monkey, a doll, a small football and a yellow dump truck.

Two tricycles and a red wagon are in the backyard, now overgrown by weeds.

Emma’s relatives describe a precocious child, who did well in her preschool class.

Rosovich, 36, remembers how she’d wait in the driveway every day for him to come home from his job in demolition. She’d take care of her baby brother. One time, when they ran out of milk, she mixed a bottle of water and rice and gave it to him.

Emma was interested in everything. She liked to paint and write and play with her dolls. She was talkative and had lots of friends in nearby Pueblo Gardens preschool. Her favorite book was “Five Little Monkeys.” Her favorite movie was “Beauty and the Beast.” She told her dad she wanted to fly airplanes.

Dozens of snapshots paint the same picture. Emma’s always smiling, always hugging somebody. Her dark eyes alive with curiosity.
“What I really loved …” Rosovich said, composing himself. “She would hug me, and kiss me on the neck and say, ‘I love you, Daddy.’ Then she’d say, ‘Can I have a happy meal?’ I always took her.

“Emma was the most amazing kid. I didn’t know they could come like that.”

A trace of a smile crosses Rosovich’s face when he describes his son. Richard Jr. was starting to babble. He loved to kick and throw a ball. He was strong and athletic, Rosovich said. One time, Richard Jr. did a slow striptease out of his diaper. When they’d go out shopping, women would come up and talk to him.

“He was a real ladies’ man,” Rosovich said.

Richard would follow Emma around and try to do everything she did, even jump off the couch with her. He’d put her Barbies in a truck and drive them around. His favorite movie was “Gnomeo and Juliet.”

For Morales, the kids “were her everything,” Rosovich said. “She was the most beautiful mom.”

According to court and medical examiner’s files, Morales on Aug. 11 shot each of her children three times in their home. Then she called the police and told them. In a recent court hearing, she appeared with puffy, tired eyes. She looked around her surroundings as if lost. She never uttered a word.

About a dozen members of her family shuffled out of the courtroom following the hearing. Some sobbed. Some embraced. Some clenched their jaws. None would speak of it to The Republic.

But police reports lay out a story of how Morales succumbed to her fears and insecurities. Her troubles consumed her so much her relatives feared for her well-being.

Some time before the shooting, she texted her sister Rosemary Morales, whom she confided in, the sister told police. In the text, Perla Morales wrote that she loved her sister and “if anything happens, if I do anything stupid don’t judge me.”

Rosemary told police that Perla had been “the whooping girl” of their parents and was beaten bloody when she was 3. Rosemary said she knew Perla shot her kids because she was combating depression and anxiety and didn’t want anybody to take her kids or make them suffer like she had.

Hints lie in the funeral service for Emma and Richard Jr. In attendance were three families — the jailed mother’s, the grieving father’s and Emma’s biological father.

Rosovich says neither he nor Morales knew Javier Mejia was Emma’s father, until he had called about a year and half before her death.

Morales and Rosovich had begun dating around the time Morales got pregnant with Emma. Rosovich recalls being happy. He wanted to start a family. Emma’s paternity was never an issue.

Much later, Mejia wanted to be part of Emma’s life, to visit her, advisers at the non-profit support group Homicide Survivors said in an interview.

But in police interviews, Morales said Mejia got her pregnant when she was drunk and told her she wouldn’t “pin that baby” on him. She told police Mejia wanted to reunite with her and wanted custody of Emma.

In late 2010, Morales broke the news to Rosovich, he recalled. “She sat me down and said, ‘I have to talk to you.’ She was sad and worried,” he said, adding he was upset.

Then she got into a deep funk, he said.

Mejia tricked Morales’ family into a DNA test, she and relatives told police. Later, in court, a judge ordered her to take parenting classes, and Mejia’s lawyer told her she was a bad mother for going to work at a new job rather than drop Emma off for visitation with Mejia.

Then Morales’ funk grew worse, Rosovich and family members told police.

Morales grew increasingly worried Mejia would take her daughter. It created strains with Rosovich and they argued more, relatives reported. Emma started having nightmares about being snatched through the window. She was afraid to be babysat at her grandmother’s house or to visit with Mejia, Rosemary told police. Perla got counseling to help her with the new stresses in her life.

Advisers at Homicide Survivors, who meet with Rosovich, Mejia and Morales’ family, said Perla Morales felt nobody listened to her.
Rosemary said her sister felt like everybody ganged up on her.

Relatives told media and the police that Morales and Rosovich had been on-again-off-again for years. During one separation, Rosovich went to prison for a year starting in 2004 for a weapons and drug conviction, court and state prison records show.

But there is no court record of any violence in the family, and Child Protective Services had never visited. The autopsies reported no injuries to the children other than the gunshot wounds. Family members describe verbal arguments, heated enough that Rosovich would slam a door and leave, but never any violence. Both were loving parents, they said.

Another argument erupted on the day of the shooting, Morales told police. The refrigerator gave out and Rosovich was trying to hunt down a replacement. Morales wanted to go to a family pizza party. Rosovich said no. It escalated.

He told her he was “done with her,” said he wasn’t coming back and stormed out.

At one point, Morales tore off in the truck but came back because she didn’t know where to go, she told police.

Morales described the shooting to police. Emma was on the couch. Richard was dancing in front of the television. They were watching “Gumballs.” She took the pistol from its hiding place behind a chair cushion.

“I remember vividly, vividly, walking towards the TV, and then I have the gun, it’s loaded already, and I look at Emma. And then I kept telling her, ‘I love you baby. I’m sorry.’ And I didn’t look at her and point the gun to her face, I mean I looked at her and looked away and shot the gun. And then I looked at my son, ’cause her eyes got big, and then I don’t remember after that. You know the movies when it goes like that? That’s how I remember it in my head.

“I looked at my son. ... He did not hear the shots ’cause of the radio and TV, so it was like he really didn’t know what was going on, but again I told him ‘I love you’ and gave him a big o’ kiss and told him ‘I’m sorry baby.’ I looked away and shot him ... and then I remember the pain from the knife.”

She said she was tired of she and her kids suffering.

Police found all three together by the sofa.

In court, Morales has maintained her plea of innocence.

Rosovich told The Republic he doesn’t blame Morales. “She got overwhelmed.”

For the funeral, Rosovich bowed to the wishes of the Morales family, which wanted Emma buried. Her grave is in an area of the cemetery called Babyland, lighted by solar garden lights and framed by two statuettes of angels and decorated with white-and-pink heart-shaped garlands. She’s under a large tree. He is raising money for a proper gravestone.

Rosovich insisted on keeping his son’s remains in the house.

“I still feel them all around,” he said of the family’s home where the children died. “At first, I didn’t want to come back here, but I came back and suddenly something wanted me to just stay right here.”

As he talked, a friend blessed the house with the incense of burning sage, a Tohono O’odham tradition.

Rosovich is still trying to cope, still trying to make sense of it all. “It’s hard, hard, very hard. I’m still in shock,” he said.

Rosovich keeps a message from the memorial service in the home. He can’t bring himself to read it.

“It’s harder to read that than face what happened,” he said. Part of it reads: “You had a dream to watch us learn. You had a dream to watch us grow. But never have you dreamt that you would have to let us go.”


http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/20121021father-childrens-deaths-struggles.html

Prosecutors seek death penalty against Tucson mom in killing of kids


Photo courtesy of Tucson Police Department
Perla Morales is accused of first-degree murder in the shooting deaths of her two children.

November 27, 2012 5:00 pm 

A Tucson woman accused of shooting her children to death in August could be executed if she’s found guilty at trial.

The Pima County Attorney’s Office filed a court document last week announcing its intention to seek the death penalty for Perla Morales, 26.

The document, which became available Tuesday, states prosecutors are seeking the death penalty because there were multiple victims and both were under the age of 15.

Morales told police she shot 17-month-old Richard Rosovich Jr. and 4-year-old Emma Rosovich multiple times after her boyfriend, Richard Rosovich Sr., threatened to leave her Aug. 11, court documents say.

Morales called 911 and told the dispatcher she needed an ambulance because her children were dead, and hung up. When the dispatcher called back, Morales told the dispatcher she had shot her kids and cut her wrists, court documents state.

Richard was pronounced dead at the home near West Valencia Road and Interstate 19, and Emma died at the hospital an hour after the 911 call.

Forensic pathologist Jennifer Gardetto performed the autopsies on both children. She noted Emma was shot three times in the torso and one of the shots was fired close enough that soot was found around the wound. Richard was twice in the torso and once in the left arm. Again, one of the shots was fired close enough to leave soot.

Assistant Pima County Public Defender Dawn Priestman provided a packet of mitigating evidence to the county attorney’s office in the hopes prosecutors would not pursue the death penalty. That mitigating evidence is sealed.

Morales and Emma’s father, Javier Mejia Jr., were in a custody battle at the time of the girl’s death, court records indicate.

Mejia met his daughter for the first time on June 8. He also saw her June 15, but Morales canceled the next two meetings.

On June 29, Pima County Superior Court Judge Terry Chandler gave Mejia permission to see Emma four hours a week and ordered Morales and Mejia to complete a parenting class.

Emma and Richard died nine days before Chandler was to meet with Morales and Mejia again on the issue of child support.

Morales is due in court Dec. 17. Her trial will be scheduled at that time.


http://azstarnet.com/news/local/crime/prosecutors-seek-death-penalty-against-tucson-mom-in-killing-of/article_9773c254-38ee-11e2-ab0e-001a4bcf887a.html]

Trial date set for Tucson mom accused of killing 2

Updated: Dec 23, 2012 3:17 PM EDT

 

Perla Morales


TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) - The trial for a Tucson woman accused of killing her two young children has been scheduled for February 2014.

The Arizona Daily Star reports that a status hearing in the case is set for April 15.
Pima County prosecutors say they are seeking the death penalty. They say the 26-year-old Perla Morales qualifies for the death penalty because she shot multiple victims and both were under 15.

Police say Morales told them she shot 17-month-old Richard Rosovich Jr. and 4-year-old Emma Rosovich several times after her boyfriend threatened to leave her last Aug. 11.

Morales called 911 and told the dispatcher she needed an ambulance because her children were dead.

When the dispatcher called back, Morales told the dispatcher she had shot her kids and cut her wrists.


http://www.myfoxmemphis.com/story/20374988/trial-date-set-for-tucson-mom-accused-of-killing-2