Intruders Kill Mother of Three : Crime: Children ordered to bed, awake to find mother dead.

Three masked men forced their way into a Huntington Park home and shot a woman to death while her three children slept, police said Wednesday.

The woman, 30, was found bound and gagged on the floor of her bedroom with a single gunshot wound to the head, investigators said. She was not identified pending notification of relatives.

Her husband works in construction and was out of town on a job when the shooting occurred, police said.

The woman’s 8-year-old son told police that his mother went to the front door of their home in the 6700 block of Arbutus Street at about 8 p.m. Tuesday, Detective Tom Weselis said.

The child told investigators that the three masked men came in the house. One carried a handgun and another had a knife. One of the intruders, in Spanish, ordered the children to go to bed. The 8-year-old and the two others, 2 and 5, did as they were told, officers said.

The oldest child awoke Wednesday morning and found his mother’s body, police said. He went to a neighbor’s home and said “something is wrong with my mother,” officers said.

Neighbors called police at 8:20 a.m. The woman had been dead more than 10 hours when her body was found, police said.

“We don’t know exactly why she let the men in,” Weselis said. “I can only assume she did so at gunpoint.”

Police said robbery appears to be the motive for the murder, but they will not know what was taken until the husband returns home. Meanwhile, the three children are being cared for by relatives.

“We’re treating it as a robbery-homicide,” Weselis said.

Neighbors described the dead woman and her family as “very quiet, very nice,” noting that she “kept to herself.”

Dolores Magana, who lives across the street said: “Nothing like this has ever happened here before. We just can’t understand it. I guess we’ll have to stick together now.”

Neighbors said they had no idea why robbers would have picked the victim’s home.

No suspects are in custody, police said. The woman, her children and the intruders all spoke Spanish, Weselis said.

Police said Wednesday evening that a $10,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killers.

The woman’s murder was the 10th in Huntington Park this year, compared to 12 for all of 1989, police said.