2 Children Stabbed to Death in Home

SAN JACINTO, Calif. — A distraught mother led police Thursday morning to the bodies of her two young children, who were stabbed to death in her apartment in an apparent double murder that sent a wave of grief through this semirural Riverside County community.

San Jacinto police identified the victims as Susana Buenrostro, 9, and her brother, Vincent, 8.

Police said they were questioning the mother, Dora Buenrostro, and her estranged husband, Alejandro, who was found later at his job in Los Angeles and was detained by the Los Angeles Police Department.

Neighbors in the well-kept apartment complex told reporters that despite thin walls and close quarters, they heard nothing early Thursday until the police arrived. A Police Department spokesman said no witnesses had been located.

Several blocks away, psychologists and mental health counselors spent a wrenching day at the elementary school, helping classmates and teachers cope with the news.

“They’re about as emotionally spent as adults can be after a day like this,” said Supt. Bill Marshall of the San Jacinto Unified School District.

Some students arrived on campus, already whispering the rumor that the two children had been slain. Counselors gingerly broke the news to others, and then spent the balance of the day counseling students and staff on how to cope with their grief and confusion, Marshall said.

The tragedy unfolded about 6:30 a.m., San Jacinto Police Sgt. Barry Backlund said, when Dora Buenrostro drove to the local Police Department and pleaded for officers to return to her home.

The woman said her estranged husband, Alejandro, had shown up and she feared for her children’s safety, Backlund said.

Inside the two-bedroom apartment, police found the bodies of the two children, apparently killed from knife wounds, Backlund said.

Police then issued an all-points-bulletin for the father and the couple’s youngest child, 3-year-old Diedra Buenrostro, whose whereabouts were unknown.

Acting on a tip from KCOP-TV, Los Angeles police detained the father without incident at his job in Los Angeles--about 80 miles from the slayings--and held him for questioning by San Jacinto homicide investigators, LAPD Officer Rigo Romero said.

Alejandro Buenrostro, 37, is a salesman at Colortone Lacquer Co. in the Silver Lake district. His supervisor, who declined to identify himself, said Buenrostro was already at work when other employees showed up at 7:40 a.m. Thursday.

“We’re not doing any surmising, but Alex is well-liked and everybody here knows him as a devoted father,” the employer said. “This whole thing is weird.”

Velia Cabanila, who shares a common wall in the four-unit garden apartment with the Buenrostro family, said she heard nothing Thursday morning, although she had heard arguments on many occasions.

“The mother was not very friendly and I could usually hear a lot of arguing going on, screaming at the kids,” Cabanila said.

On various occasions, she said, she allowed the children to use her bathroom because their mother was gone and the apartment was locked.

But another neighbor, Adela Bond, said the mother was a friendly figure in the apartment complex.

Bond said she believed that the mother frequently took the children to Los Angeles to spend weekends with their father.