Teens’ Deaths Are Murder, Suicide, Police Say : Oxnard: Authorities believe 18-year-old Elton D. Morrow killed his girlfriend, Leanna Demisla Joseph, 16, and then shot himself.

An 18-year-old Oxnard man shot and killed his 16-year-old girlfriend before turning the gun on himself and committing suicide, authorities said Wednesday.

Myrtle Morrow returned to her home in the 300 block of Pleasant Valley Road shortly after 11 p.m. Tuesday to find the bodies of her son, Elton D. Morrow, and his girlfriend, Leanna Demisla Joseph, in a pool of blood on the bathroom floor.

Each had been shot once in the head at close range with a “medium-sized caliber handgun,” Ventura County Deputy Coroner Craig Stevens said.

“The 16-year-old appears to be the homicide victim and the 18-year-old appears to be the shooter and a suicide,” Stevens said.

Leanna would have been a junior at Hueneme High School in September. Morrow was a senior there last year, and that is where the pair met, Myrtle Morrow said.

“I don’t know the reason why it happened,” she said Wednesday afternoon. “Only God knows.”

She said her son and Leanna had fought earlier in the evening.

“They were jealous of each other,” Morrow said of the argument.

But she said she thought the two had worked out their differences.

“I’ve seen a lot worse arguments,” she said. “This one was a calm one.”

Oxnard police said they are still investigating the motive.

“With a murder-suicide you may never know,” department spokesman David Keith said. “They were in a relationship and we’re looking into that.”

Neither investigators nor Morrow’s mother could say how the 18-year-old came to have a handgun.

“That is one of the things we are investigating,” Keith said.

Meanwhile, two tired families tried Wednesday to cope with the losses.

Myrtle Morrow spent the day cleaning her bathroom where the bodies had been found. Her sons blared rap music from a stereo while the remnants of a July 4 celebration--an empty malt liquor bottle and a pizza box--remained on the front porch of their modest home.

“Did he think what this would do to his family?” Morrow said.

Morrow said she had left the two alone in her home Tuesday evening when she went to visit a friend.

No one else was home when the shooting occurred, and none of the neighbors said they heard gunshots.

“It’s unbelievable,” said next-door neighbor E.J. Carter, 15. “There’s enough going on around here--and now this.”

He said he attended class at Hueneme High School with Leanna.

“She was nice,” he said. “Always smiled and said ‘hi.’ ”

Leanna moved in with her sister about a year ago after living with her father in Compton. The two lived in an apartment seven blocks from the Morrow home.

“I’m still trying to figure out what happened,” said her father, Junies Joseph, who was awakened by a telephone call notifying him of his daughter’s death.

Leanna’s mother took an airplane from Arizona and arrived at the Morrow house Wednesday afternoon. She had little to say as she collected the few photographs the Morrows had of her daughter.

“I don’t believe it,” Patricia Joseph said sobbing. The slain girl is also survived by two sisters.

The dead man leaves behind four brothers, who called him “Worm.”

“When he was born he looked so small and shriveled, like a wiggly worm,” Myrtle Morrow said. “The name just stuck.”