Police Continue Probe Into Shooting Deaths of Twin Girls, 15

They were bright and giggly and overflowing with everything. Tara was the talker. Terassa was the cheerleader. They were each other’s best friend. They were their mother’s only babies.

Tara and Terassa Butler, fraternal twins born minutes apart 15 years ago, died together, shot to death in the living room of their mother’s Inglewood house.

There had been an argument with Tara’s ex-boyfriend that led to an alleged assault Monday at a local restaurant. The police came and left, then returned later that day to the house when neighbors reported hearing gunshots. The twins were dead when the police arrived.

Officers Tuesday had yet to tie the alleged assault to the murders, but they were looking for the boyfriend for questioning.

“They may be linked together. We don’t know yet,” said Lt. Eve R. Irvine.

No one else knew much more.

Rina Cooks, who taught the girls dance, came to the house, frantic, then aggrieved upon confirmation the victims were indeed her students. “To see this like last night [on television], two twins at Inglewood. I knew immediately. I jumped up and said, ‘Oh my God, my babies.’ ”

The girls did everything together, friends said, and had started taking dance lessons more than a year ago. Cooks said they quickly became more than students. She called them her adopted daughters.

“Those were my babies. And they’re gone. They were wonderful girls. They were wonderful. They would come into my office and open the mail, file things. . . . They were nice young ladies. They would tell me when they had boy troubles and I would say, ‘Girls, you’re too young for this.’ They don’t know love. It’d be kid problems. That’s all it is, kid problems. Who’d think this could happen?”

Cooks looked at the house. It’s an older place, a good-sized three-bedroom with big trees out front and a place for barbecues out back. A layer of yellow stucco is peeling off the front. It’s gray-green beneath.

There’s a bullet hole on the right side of the front door, about a foot off the ground. It was made from the inside out. The stoop is covered with green carpet. It was still wet Tuesday from where the Fire Department washed out the blood.

“They made me laugh. They made me mad,” Cooks said of the twins. “All I know is they’ll be dancing in heaven now.”

Counselors, clergy and therapists were called Tuesday morning to Inglewood High School, where the girls were sophomores. Regular classes went on while counseling sessions were held in the cafeteria.

“It’s sad, very sad. It’s just a lot of kids in tears and very sad and holding onto each other,” said Clara Reed, office manager at the school.

Classmates built a memorial of flowers and photographs inside the school. Friends came from high schools all over the city to pay their respects, classmates said.

The twins were popular, active students who received good grades.

Terassa made the varsity cheerleading squad in just her sophomore year. She was the more reticent of the twins, friends said. But they added that was merely by way of comparison. Tara was so outgoing, she made everyone else seem almost shy.

Tara ran track and danced at school assemblies. She would have danced at every one if they let her, said one friend.

“Tara was always talking, all the time,” said Raquel Brown. “If she had something to say, boy, she said it.”

The Butlers’ friends knew about the ex-boyfriend. Most also knew about the reported fight midday Monday. Friends said Tara and Terassa were both at the restaurant and the ex-boyfriend showed up. Friends said he was a student at another high school. So far as they knew, the boyfriend had no quarrel with Terassa, but said they wouldn’t be surprised to find out Terassa had come to her sister’s aid.

“Terassa, if her sister needed her, she was there. I mean right now,” said one classmate who asked not to be identified.

Raquel Brown said she saw Terassa later in the day and she gave no indication there was anything wrong.

“I was talking to her after school yesterday. Just normal stuff,” Brown said. “What we were going to do this summer, what jobs we’d try to get.”

Two hours later, Terassa and Tara Butler were dead.