3 Daughters See Slaying of Mother in Driveway

As Leticia Morales-Carranza lay bleeding from gunshots in her driveway, the woman’s three young daughters watched through the window of the family car, one of them crying out, “Mommy, mommy, please don’t die,” according to a witness of the killing Friday.

Police say Morales-Carranza had just gotten out of the car at about 8:35 p.m. Thursday when her attacker, armed with a semiautomatic handgun, shot her several times in the chest. Morales-Carranza’s three daughters, ages 3, 6 and 10, saw the attack.

The woman who heard the child’s cries said she was watching TV in her house across the street on Vanscoy Avenue when she heard the gunshots. “I thought maybe they were playing with firecrackers, and wondered if I should call the police,” said the woman, who did not want to be identified.

Then she saw the body in the driveway.

The slaying had the appearance of a professional killing because it was carried out so quickly and because nothing was stolen, including the woman’s new Chevy Suburban, said Los Angeles Police Lt. Ron LaRue.

“This certainly doesn’t appear to be a random shooting, this seems to be intentional,” LaRue said. But LaRue said he knows of no motive for the killing, and he did not name any suspects.

Morales-Carranza’s pink stucco home is on a tree-lined street in a working-class neighborhood within earshot of the Golden State Freeway. Neighbors said she and her husband, who moved into the house two years ago, kept to themselves.

On Friday afternoon, Antonio Morales, 23, visited the house where his sister was killed and dropped to his knees at the site of her spilled blood.

“Our mother wanted me to put some on the back of this picture,” said Morales, his eyes swollen from crying. Morales dabbed his finger in a pool of blood and smeared a crimson cross onto the back of his sister’s picture.

After learning of their sister’s death, Morales and his siblings tried to keep the news hidden from their mother, Maria Guadaloupe Carranza. They feared the 42-year-old grandmother would not be able to handle the shock. She had just spent two days at St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, where she received treatment for a heart murmur.

“But she heard her daughter’s name on the news,” said one family member. “One of her sons was trying to change the channel. But she saw her daughter’s house and Leticia’s body on the news.”

Before leaving her mother’s house on the night of the attack, Morales-Carranza told her mother, “ ‘Momma, I’ll be back. I’m going to pick up the girls,’ ” recalled her sister-in-law Linda Rodriguez, 21. “But we never saw her again.”

Family members said Morales-Carranza picked up her children at another relative’s house before taking them to her own house.

Between sobs, Maria Carranza described her daughter as a fun-loving woman who loved to dance. She loved her children even more.

“I have no idea who would do this to her,” she said.

Other family members said her marriage to her husband, Ishmael Lopez, was solid. He has been in Tijuana, Mexico, after being turned away at the U.S. border because he could not produce proper documentation, they said. He called from Tijuana on the night of the slaying, family members said.

LaRue said the children did not recognize the man who shot their mother. They described him as Latino, 5 feet, 7 inches tall, weighing about 130 pounds.

Family members said Morales-Carranza, a housewife since dropping out of junior high school 10 years ago, and Lopez, a car mechanic, had no gang ties and they know of no family enemies.