Murder-Suicide From Ledge Kills 3

A distraught woman killed her two young daughters by pushing them off a ninth-floor ledge of the downtown Los Angeles County courthouse Wednesday, then leaped to her own death, Los Angeles police said.

Witnesses said the woman let out a piercing scream before she jumped, landing in a lighted interior courtyard.

Moments earlier, police had received a report of a suicidal woman on top of the building and tried to talk her back inside. One witness told of seeing the woman throw “two objects off the ninth-floor cafeteria balcony. That witness had no idea those objects were actually children,” Lt. Horace Frank said.

The tragedy took place at the courthouse at 111 N. Hill St. as the building emptied for the day at about 5:40 p.m.

Frank would not identify the victims beyond saying that the woman was African American in her mid-30s and the girls were 6 and 8. The family was believed to have lived in Southwest Los Angeles, he said.

What prompted the woman’s actions was not clear, but county officials said she may have reacted to a civil case she attended in the building Wednesday morning with her husband and daughters.

“They left to go home,” said Frank, who declined to provide details of the case. The husband returned to work, but the wife “returned to the courthouse later with her two kids.”

About 5:30 p.m., crisis intervention officers responded to a report of a woman threatening to jump from the ninth floor. One of the officers tried to console the woman and talk her back inside the courthouse.

Suddenly, “she climbed up on the ledge and jumped, hitting the fourth-floor ledge,” Frank said. Officers who rushed to the fourth floor found “two girls who appeared to be lifeless,” he said.

The woman, who fell to the ground floor, died at the scene. The girls suffered traumatic injuries and were in full cardiac arrest when taken to County-USC Medical Center. They were pronounced dead on arrival, he said.

Los Angeles Police Department homicide detectives and Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators were conducting a murder-suicide investigation of the incident that Frank described as “very tragic for many reasons.”

“Certainly this is the time of the year for people to be festive and celebrating,” he said. “Now, [this family] has to deal with a situation like this.”