2 Sisters Slain, Man Shot in Domestic Strife; Police Arrest Man

Two sisters were shot to death and a man was wounded when an ex-boyfriend of one of the women burst into their Sepulveda home with a shotgun early Wednesday and began firing, police said. Two children, ages 2 and 4, were asleep in the small, two-bedroom home at the time and escaped unharmed.

Dean Roger McGrath, 29, was arrested on suspicion of murder about 12 hours after the shootings, which police said were rooted in domestic problems.

Marleene Evelyn Taylor, 32, and Kathleen Taylor Fien, 30, were hit with shotgun blasts at 1:30 a.m. inside the home, Detective Michael Brandt said. Anthony Deluca, 28, ran from the house calling for help but the gunman chased him down about six houses away and shot him in the back, police said. He collapsed on the front porch of a neighbor’s house and pounded on the door for help.

Police said Taylor’s two young sons--4-year-old Tony, fathered by Deluca, and 2-year-old Jake, fathered by McGrath--were sleeping when McGrath allegedly entered the house through an unlocked door and began shooting. The boys awoke to find their mother dead in another room, police said, and were later placed in the custody of juvenile authorities.

Residents called police when gunshots and screams erupted in the neighborhood of mostly single-family homes that is one block away from an area where streets were barricaded by police this year in an effort to slow drug dealing and related crimes.

“I heard muffled shots and then shooting outside. Someone was screaming for help,” said Sonya Stanchfield, who lives next door to the sisters’ home. “It was pretty wild for this neighborhood. We’ve had problems around here but nothing like this before.”

“The violence is getting closer all the time,” said Ruth Smith, on whose porch Deluca collapsed. “We had been wondering how far things could go.”

Police said Taylor was dead when detectives arrived and Fien died en route to Panorama Community Hospital in Panorama City. Deluca, who police said identified McGrath as the attacker, was in critical but stable condition at an undisclosed hospital.

Detectives arrested McGrath without a struggle at a North Hollywood house where a shotgun believed to be the murder weapon was also found.

Brandt said the killings at the house were apparently motivated by problems between McGrath, Taylor and Deluca.

McGrath, Taylor and her two young sons moved into the house four months ago, along with Fien and her husband, David Fien. On April 21, McGrath was arrested on a drunk driving warrant and served time in County Jail before being released June 29, authorities said.

While McGrath was in jail, Deluca either began visiting often or moved into the small duplex, police and neighbors said.

“The motivation was domestic problems but we are still trying to figure out what the relationships were,” Brandt said.

Neighbors said that the two sisters and the children were playing on the lawn early Tuesday evening and that later Taylor sat on the front porch with Deluca. “There was no sign that anything was coming,” neighbor John Stanchfield said.

Some residents said they worried that police barricades blocking the troubled nearby area pushed more crime into their neighborhood.

But because Wednesday’s shooting was apparently motivated by a domestic dispute, it was treated by many neighbors as an isolated incident. “Something like this could happen anyplace,” Smith said.

Staff writer Patricia Klein Lerner contributed to this story.