Police Probe Deaths of 4 in Family

Jorge Zorilla answered the door to find a frantic neighbor asking him to rush to his house, where a 10-year-old boy lay bleeding from a knife wound.

“He was saying, Jorge, do you know this boy?” said Zorilla, who recognized him as a child who lived around the corner.

Police followed the trail of blood to the boy’s home Tuesday night and found a scene unlike anything this well-off neighborhood across the bay from San Francisco has confronted.

The 10-year-old’s entire family -- Roderick Fernandez, 34; Rozelle Fernandez, 26; their 2-year-old daughter; and their 11-month-old son -- lay shot or stabbed to death in different rooms of the house.

Richmond police spent Wednesday investigating the case as a possible murder-suicide and suspect the killings were carried out by the father, Sgt. Enos Johnson said. There were no signs of forced entry.

“We’re treating it as four homicides, but we believe that all parties involved are accounted for,” Johnson said.

He added that the surviving son, who suffered a single stab wound, was in critical condition at Children’s Hospital Oakland.

Although police did not release the victims’ names, shocked neighbors identified them. They said the family had been quiet, had seemed close-knit and had shown no signs of conflict.

Louisa Villacorte, 52, moved a year ago to a house on the street where the family lived. “I was just telling my sister last night nothing ever happens here,” said Villacorte of an area where neighbors have bake-offs, and frogs can be heard croaking at night.

Zorilla described Roderick Fernandez as a family man and churchgoer who participated in a Polynesian dance group and took the family on vacations to the Philippines and Disneyland.