Mother Kills 3 Children, Dies in Leap Off High-Rise

A 30-year-old Long Beach woman slashed and stabbed her three young children to death today, then committed suicide by leaping from a nearby high-rise building.

The woman was identified by Long Beach police as Laura Belizaire, who lived with her children in an apartment house in the 1000 block of Lime Street.

Neighbors called paramedics to the Belizaire home shortly before 7 a.m. Inside the blood-drenched apartment, police said, they found Summer Simril, 3 months, Brian Simril, 18 months, and Rasheed Tucker, 9 years, dying of multiple stab wounds.

Belizaire had apparently fled the apartment and gone to her mother’s home a few blocks away, where she attacked one of her sisters with a hammer, police said.

Body Found in Alley

A few minutes later, Belizaire’s body was found in an alley behind the 13-story St. Mary Tower in the 1100 block of Atlantic Avenue.

Long Beach Police Lt. Jim Reed said, “There is no indication what caused her to commit this heinous act.”

Mildred Belizaire, 29, sister of the dead woman, told reporters outside the Lime Street apartment that she thought Laura Belizaire was worried about being evicted.

“She loved her kids,” Mildred Belizaire said. “I don’t care what anybody says. She loved those kids. . . .”

She said she knew her sister was despondent. “I knew she was going to do something, but I didn’t think she was going to kill her kids, . . .” Belizaire said. “(But) she always said when she died she wanted her kids to be with her.” She said her sister had come to their mother’s home to tell the family that her children were dead, then for some reason attacked another sister, Theresa, who apparently was not badly injured.

‘Faithful’ Church Member

Laura Belizaire’s minister, the Rev. Ralph J. Mosby of St. John Baptist Church, told reporters that the dead woman was a “faithful member” of his congregation.

He was also confounded by what happened. “She was a very beautiful person to her children,” he said. “She was always very nervous . . . not psychotic, but seemed unbalanced. . . . But a very warm and very diligent person in church.”

The Belizaire apartment on the ground floor is about a block from St. Mary Medical Center, where she and her three children were taken, and from the senior citizens complex from which she jumped.

Her youngest child died at 7:04 a.m., the 9-year-old at 8:30 and the middle child after surgery at 11:13. Their mother was pronounced dead at 8:36 a.m.