Carbon Monoxide Blamed for 12 Deaths During Rite : Sect: The group’s leader reportedly said that God was coming and held ‘cleansing’ services in Tijuana home.

The 12 people who died during a religious ceremony in a closed, four-room house were victims of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a butane lantern used for light, officials said Friday.

Victor Vazquez, a deputy district attorney in Tijuana, said the windows and doors of the small house, located in Colonia Mariano Matamoros on the southeastern edge of the city, were shut tight, keeping fresh air from getting in. There apparently were no vents in the house that would have allowed the gas to escape.

“It was definitely an accident,” Vasquez said.

As the lantern continued to burn, people began falling asleep, a symptom of carbon monoxide poisoning, officials said. Not everyone in the house died; five victims were found unconscious and hospitalized. Three remained comatose.

Mexican authorities have now ruled out a fruit punch as a source of the deaths. The group drank the punch, which one survivor said led to screaming, and officials at first believed that the beverage was contaminated with an industrial solvent or alcohol.

The nightlong religious ritual apparently played a role in the deaths. On several occasions Wednesday night, people tried to enter the house but were turned away by the group’s spiritual leader--Federico Padres Mexia--or others in the house who were participating in the religious ceremony. Mexia, 62, is now in a coma.

A survivor of the ritual, Alfredo Osuna Hernandez, 22, said the group was engaged in a “cleansing” ritual that began early Wednesday night. It included chanting and standing or sitting inside a circle marked off by a rope laid on the floor. Asked why no one left to seek help, Osuna said, “It is very damaging to leave the circle.”

The daughter of one of the victims, Ana Saviola Miranda Juarez, 19, who entered the house early Thursday morning, said it smelled strongly of gas. She didn’t disturb the motionless occupants, who included her mother, because she felt the ritual was still under way, and said some of the people were snoring.

Her mother, Gloria Miranda Juarez, 45, owned the home and lived there with Mexia. She was among the dead.

On Friday, a picture of Mexia began to emerge, painted by those who live in the Colonia Mariano Matamoros shantytown, home to many migrants from the interior of Mexico, and from those in Sun City in Riverside County, where Mexia had a home.

Mexia moved in with Gloria Miranda in July, according to neighbors. The woman had moved into the house in April. The home stood out in the dusty, teeming hillside community, where most houses are little more than shacks of tar-paper walls and corrugated metal roofs.

Mexia’s home had brown stucco walls, a pitched roof, glass windows and a small satellite dish.

Soon after Mexia moved in, word spread that he was a spiritual leader who, through mediums, conducted so-called “cleansing rituals” at the home, where he was building a chapel, a neighbor said.

“He said God was coming down because he (Mexia) had asked him to,” said Isabel Mendez, 30, who lives nearby. “He said it was going to make this community very famous, and lots of reporters were going to arrive, and lots of hotels would be built.”

Another neighbor, Daria Machado, 26, said there always seemed to be a lot of people at the house and that the religious ceremonies took place often, though not necessarily late into the night. Often she saw cars with California license plates parked around the house.

“They would go inside and you wouldn’t see them anymore,” Machado said. “The house is very closed up with curtains on the windows so you couldn’t see much.”

Mexia became friendly with a tortilla shop owner, Rafael Corchado Meraz, 37, who operated the La Costena Tortilla shop.

Corchado became one of Mexia’s strongest supporters, urging his customers and his workers to attend the rituals. Conchado and two of his children were among the dead Thursday.

“He would ask me if I wanted to go,” said Jorge Reyes Castro, 18, who worked at the tortilla factory. “He said they would cure people there and that they were going to see God. He said that everyone would sit in a chair and close their eyes and then their body would be like asleep. And that they would sleep three to four hours and talk to God.”

Rosa Oralia Valenzuela, 18, was among those waiting Friday outside the intensive care unit at the hospital to find out the condition of their brothers, sisters or parents.

Oralia, whose two sisters-in-law died and whose father-in-law was in a coma, said she had attended a few of Mexia’s sessions.

She said she was introduced to a woman named Conchita who Mexia said was a medium through whom God would speak. Oralia said Conchita sat in an armchair and stood up as each person went up to her.

Conchita would have people lift their arms, turn over their palms and tell her about their problems. Oralia said she was reluctant to tell the medium anything. “So she looked at me and said, ‘Here is the key to luck.’ I looked down and I saw she had pressed nothing into my hand.”

Mexia’s neighbors in Sun City, a community east of Lake Elsinore, said Mexia moved into a house in a new subdivision about two years ago. The house in the 28000 block of Calle Gaviota has been for sale for a year at $93,500.

Shirley Hosking, who lived next door to Mexia, described him as a quiet person who told her landlord that “he had died and went to heaven twice, and that God gave him a book.”

The victims, according to the coroner’s office, are: Maria Dora Hernandez Peraza, 38, and her two daughters, Blanca Sarabia Hernandez, 20, and Maribel Sarabia Hernandez, 15; Elodia Mondragon Jimenez, 30, and her children, Jesus Eduardo Peralta Mondragon, 15, and Monica Lezette Peralta Mondragon, 11; Fidel Coronel Franco, 65, and his wife, Benita Rosales Villapando, believed to be 45; Consuelo Moreno Ponce, 14; Rafael Corchado Meraz, 37; Margarita Ramos de Osuna, 20, and Gloria Miranda Juarez, 45.

Times staff writers Laurie Becklund in Tijuana, Dave Lesher in Sun City and H.G. Reza and Armando Acuna in San Diego contributed to this report.