La Cañada community pieces together a tragedy

Screams Sunday night in La Cañada Flintridge faded into an uneasy quiet Tuesday, with a memorial to an off-duty deputy murdered by her husband one of the few signs of public grief.

A shrine on the driveway of the empty home on the 5000 block of Crown Avenue contained several flowers and a teddy bear with chalk messages underneath.

“Your strength to push through all obstacles will continue to inspire me,” one read. “Gonna miss that pretty smile. Rest easy, sister.”

Another, larger message, read:

“(End of Watch) 9-6-15 LASD.”

One neighbor, who asked that her identity be withheld citing privacy concerns, said she and her husband were in the backyard of their Crown Avenue home Sunday night when they heard sirens and helicopters overhead.

“It happened so quickly. It seemed like all the sheriff’s (deputies) had descended upon our little enclave,” she recalled. “That’s when we knew something was seriously, seriously wrong.”

She said she didn’t know very much about couple, saying they were very private.

“When those two moved in, it was clear they wanted to keep to themselves,” she said, adding the husband would occasionally avoid greetings while walking his son to school in the morning. “It was an oddity.”

Investigators believe Los Angeles County Firefighter James Taylor, 35, fatally shot his 32-year-old wife, an off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy identified as Cecilia Hoschet, before fleeing the scene. Taylor’s body was later found at the Pacoima facility where he worked.

At about 10 p.m., shortly after deputies were dispatched to the home to investigate a report of a screaming woman, a male voice used the emergency radio channel to describe what authorities would find.

“There’s going to be one DB,” the man said, using shorthand for a dead body. “No assailant. You can let them know it’s clear.”

On Monday, homicide detectives were scrutinizing the radio call on the theory that Taylor was the voice on the radio. Fire officials declined to comment on whether the voice sounded like Taylor’s, but a county Fire Department spokesman, Randall Wright, acknowledged “that aspect is under investigation by the Sheriff’s Department.”

The slaying of one public servant allegedly by another stunned both agencies, even more so because of the presence of the couple’s 6-year-old son at the home. “There is no way to explain this to a child,” L.A. County Sheriff Jim McDonnell said.

It was not clear whether the child, who was home at the time, witnessed the shooting.

Sheriff’s Lt. David Coleman said that after gunning down his wife, Taylor took the boy to a relative without revealing what he had done, and then drove his county-issued vehicle to Pacoima. He was found dead there from a single gunshot wound. He had his radio with him, Coleman said, and the gun that killed him was consistent with the one that killed his wife.

Investigators were confident about how and when the two shootings occurred, but were trying to understand why, Coleman said. The couple had no known history of domestic violence, no restraining orders and no divorce proceedings.

“We have no indication of why this tragedy occurred. He didn’t say anything to explain” or leave a note behind, Coleman said. Investigators were interviewing family members and friends Monday, he said.

The couple had financial difficulties in the past. They filed for bankruptcy in 2010 after an investment property they had purchased in Canyon Country became mired in debt. They emerged from bankruptcy two years ago.

Hoschet had been with the sheriff’s department for two years. She worked at the Inmate Reception Center of the Los Angeles County jail. Taylor was a six-year veteran of the county fire department.

“We lost a wonderful deputy last night,” Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell said in a prepared statement. “Deputy Cecilia Hoschet impressed everyone she met at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department with her positive and helpful approach to her work. She enjoyed being a deputy and really liked people.”

In a prepared statement, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Daryl Osby expressed his deepest condolences to family and friends of the couple.

“Today is a sad day for all public safety personnel in Los Angeles County,” he said. “Our thoughts are with everyone who was impacted by this tragedy.”

In Sierra Madre, where Hoschet had worked for several years prior to becoming a deputy, her former colleagues struggled to deal with her sudden and violent death.

Sierra Madre Fire Department Chief Steve Heydorff said Hoschet was among the first round of paramedics to be hired when the department began its program in 2007.

“She was a great paramedic,” he recalled Tuesday. “When I’d go on calls with her, I could see the care she’d take with her patients, no matter who they were.”

Although Hoschet left the department formally to train in the sheriff’s academy, Heydorff said she stopped by at least once a month to keep in touch. Sometimes, her son was in tow and would play on the fire engines.

When Heydorff first heard a description of the incident on Monday morning, he was about 90% certain Hoschet was the victim but was hoping for the best. Still, when her identity was released later that day, the news startled him.

“It kind of takes all the breath out of you, especially with the circumstances,” he said.

The Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.

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Sara Cardine, sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine