Mother, Son, Friend Found Slain at 3 Clairemont Sites

A woman, her 3-year-old son and a male acquaintance were found dead Wednesday at three separate locations along a 22-block stretch of busy Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, police said.

All three victims suffered unspecified “trauma,” police said. More specific information on the injuries was not available late Wednesday, and details about the killings were generally sketchy. The bodies were found within 3 1/2 hours.

“At this point, there is no motive and no suspect,” said Bill Robinson, a San Diego police spokesman.

Robinson confirmed, however, that police believe the three slayings are linked.

There was no official confirmation of the victims’ identity by late Wednesday, although friends of the dead woman identified her readily as a mother of two who lived in the house where she was found. Police said she knew the male victim, believed to be in his late 20s.

Area residents said the neighborhood, although busy, had not been a high-crime community.

“Nothing like that has ever happened here,” said Chandra Urbina, a neighbor. “My heart is going a hundred miles an hour. I got four kids in (my house). And now this.”

The man’s body was found first, in an alley off the 3200 block of Clairemont Mesa Boulevard shortly before 11 a.m., police said, adding that he had injuries to his upper body and was found by a man walking his dog.

At 12:41 p.m., police said, two passers-by found the body of the 3-year-old, who was clad in pajamas. He was wrapped in a blanket or bedspread and lying in a carport behind a building in the 5400 block of Clairemont Mesa Boulevard.

A neighbor found the woman’s body at 2:32 p.m., police said, after the neighbor had stopped by for a visit. The dead woman was in the back bedroom of the house, and a window had been broken, police said.

After word of the slayings spread, shocked neighbors and acquaintances gathered on the street outside the woman’s home in the 4300 block of Clairemont Mesa Boulevard, forming a makeshift vigil and voicing disbelief that she was gone. The home is across the street from a Presbyterian church and preschool.

She “was really a nice girl,” said Conny Stangel, who said she knew the dead woman well. “She had a lot of friends.”

That day, Stangel said, she was planning to attend a party at the woman’s home when she heard a news report of the killings. The party was in celebration of the third birthday of the woman’s son, who police said was also found dead. A police spokesman confirmed that the child was believed to have turned 3 on Wednesday.

Neighbors said the woman also had a 3-month-old infant, who was uninjured--possibly in the same house where his mother was found. But there was no official confirmation of that report, just as there was no official word on who else may have lived in the house.

Throughout the afternoon and evening, homicide detectives and coroner’s officials entered and exited the woman’s single-story home, which was cordoned off by police.

Times staff writer Lori Grange contributed to this story.