Death in the Desert : Recently Freed From Jail, a Man Comes Looking for His Wife. Moments Later, 3 Children Are Dead

When 23-year-old Angelica Cervantes answered the front door of the tidy house and saw her uncle, there was no inkling of the madness about to unfold in this barren Mojave Desert community.

He asked politely to speak to his wife, Rocio Cervantes.

The children inside were getting ready for school, and Rocio was scurrying about, making sure they had everything they needed.

The last thing she had expected to encounter Thursday was her husband, Martin Mendoza, 33, a construction worker whom she had fled three weeks earlier when the couple lived in Carson City, Nev.

He had been arrested Jan. 7 on a misdemeanor domestic battery charge for beating his stepdaughter. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced last Monday to a month in jail. But the jails were crowded, so the judge told him that he could avoid incarceration if he stayed clear of alcohol and violence for a year.

Mendoza--a free man--borrowed a car and drove south with his cousin, Jose Delgado, to his brother-in-law’s house in this isolated stretch of desert 35 miles north of Palm Springs, where his wife was staying.

Rocio was surprised to see her husband, Angelica said, and spoke briefly with him outside before returning indoors, leaving him in the front yard to cool his heels.

In the meantime, Angelica Cervantes announced that she would drive the five children--siblings and cousins--to school. Mendoza objected.

“He said, ‘They’re not going to school,’ ” Angelica Cervantes recalled later. “I asked why not, and he said, ‘Because I said so.’ ”

Angelica Cervantes’ brother, Julio Cervantes, ignored him and told the children to get into the family car. They obeyed. With that, Mendoza “pulled a gun out from behind his pants, beneath his jacket,” Angelica Cervantes said.

“He pointed the gun at my aunt, towards her head, and he said to Julio, ‘I told you, they are not going to school, and if you take them, I will kill Rocio.”

Angelica Cervantes said that the argument escalated and, without warning, Mendoza fired twice at Julio and twice again at Antonio Cervantes--Julio and Angelica’s father--who was standing nearby. Neither man was struck.

“I called 911. I was crying, and I told them to send the police right away,” Angelica Cervantes said.

In the commotion, one of her younger brothers, Sergio Cervantes, jumped out of the car and ran back into the house. The four other children cowered in the front seat, crying with fear.

“Martin Mendoza told Rocio to get back inside the house and to give the rest of us the message: ‘Don’t call the police or I’ll kill everyone,’ ” Angelica Cervantes said.

Rocio followed his instructions, but Angelica Cervantes already had made the call.

Seemingly without provocation, Mendoza pulled his stepdaughter, Sandra Resendiz, 13, from the car, held her with one arm and pointed the gun at her head, Angelica Cervantes said. Sandra was the youngster whom Mendoza admitted having beaten earlier back in Carson City.

By then, the sheriff’s 911 dispatcher had called back to confirm the call.

“I told them what he had said, that if we called the police, he would kill the children, and I told them to try to send the police to the backyard,” Angelica Cervantes said.

The dispatcher was also told that a gun was pointed at Sandra’s head.

Two deputies, each in his own car, had been speeding toward the house along two-lane highways and dirt roads, and talked to one another on the radio about how best to approach the situation, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman said.

“It took nine or 10 minutes, from the time of the first call (8:09 a.m.) for them to get there--which is pretty good time,” Deputy Cheryl Huff said. “And they know they’re rolling into a volatile situation where they could get shot, too, but they’re concerned for the child.”

As the two deputies pulled up in front of the house, Mendoza fired a fatal shot into his stepdaughter’s head, authorities said.

Without moving or breaking rhythm, he opened fire on the children in the car, killing Erik Resendiz--Rocio’s son by another father--and Angelica Cervantes’ little sister, Wendy. Both were 11. The shots grazed 7-year-old Martin Mendoza Jr., the son of the accused gunman and Rocio Cervantes.

Mendoza turned toward the deputies and continued firing, and they returned fire, striking him in the shoulder, authorities said.

Mendoza ran around the back of the house and was tackled by Julio and Antonio Cervantes, who wrestled the gun away from him. Mendoza broke free but the deputies wrestled him back to the ground.

Mendoza was taken to a hospital in Palm Springs, then transferred to the jail ward at San Bernardino County Medical Center. He is expected to be arraigned Monday or Tuesday on three counts of murder, along with other charges.

Investigators are at a loss to explain Mendoza’s motives, Huff said.

Delgado, who had fled in the borrowed car when the argument started outside the house, was stopped as he drove through nearby Yucca Valley and was booked on suspicion of murder.

“We consider him an accomplice,” Huff said. “He knew that Mendoza had a weapon, and when the verbal threats started, he split. He didn’t stay to offer assistance.”

Huff said the charges against Delgado may be downgraded to that of being an accessory to murder.

Meanwhile, the family members can barely cope with their losses, Angelica Cervantes said.

“We are all crying, every one of us, and asking for the children to come back,” she said.

“Wendy was our little girl,” she said of her sister. “This morning, when my mom woke up, she asked if Wendy had come out of her room yet.

“She was saying, ‘Where is Wendy?’ ”