Mother’s Quest for a Better Life Turns Tragic as Children Die in Freak Hanging

Diana Brown moved her family from Santa Ana to Las Vegas in search of a better life and newer dreams.

Her world came crashing down this week when her two children died by hanging from a tree in what police said was a tragic accident.

North Las Vegas police said Luneta Brown, 11, and her 10-year-old brother, Clement, apparently had been playing in the back yard when they accidentally hanged themselves with a piece of rope attached to a tree. The chairs nearby had been tipped over and it appeared the children had been standing on them, police said.

The case is still being investigated.

“The same question goes through my mind,” Diana Brown, 35, said Wednesday from Las Vegas. “It’s just hard for me to fathom that anyone could play this kind of game in the first place. Just how do children play this kind of a game?”

The children were staying at their aunt’s house while their mother returned to Santa Ana to pick up their birth certificates so they could register for school here. The youngsters were told to stay at their home in southeast Las Vegas, where they moved two weeks ago. But the children convinced a relative that they were supposed to stay at an aunt’s home.

Brown said she moved to Las Vegas to look for a better life.

“California wasn’t offering me and my children anything,” said Brown who is a single mother with three other children. “I just wanted a better life for them. Las Vegas was new. I thought it would provide that. I didn’t know I would lose so much here.”

Luneta and Clement attended Esther L. Walter Elementary School in Anaheim before moving to Las Vegas.