Sepulveda Pair Shot to Death While Their Daughter Watches

A Sepulveda man shot and killed two neighbors Sunday from his second-story apartment as the couple’s 8-year-old daughter watched, Los Angeles police said.

The man began firing as the couple waited in their pickup truck to leave the gated parking lot of their apartment complex in the 8100 block of Langdon Avenue, Sgt. Alfonso Rodriguez said.

Pedro Antonio Pacheco, 23, was arrested on suspicion of two counts of murder and was being held without bail at the Police Department’s Van Nuys Jail, Rodriguez said. Police recovered a rifle from his apartment. Detectives had not determined a motive.

Police identified the victims as Oscar Ernesto Sanchez, 33, and his wife, Coralia Angelica Duran Sanchez, 30. They lived in the same apartment complex as Pacheco, Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said Oscar Sanchez was shot in the back as he sat in his truck. Realizing that they had come under fire, Sanchez’s wife got out of the truck, pulling her daughter, Jeymy Sanchez, with her. The wife was shot outside the truck and died at the scene, Rodriguez said.

Oscar Sanchez was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital, Rodriguez said. The girl was not injured in the 12:15 p.m. shooting.

Police released the girl and two siblings, ages 6 and 11, to a relative pending a custody hearing by the county Department of Children’s Services, Rodriguez said.