Did a combination of drugs and grief over a deceased child lead to a murder-suicide that claimed four lives?
We're learning more about the horrific scene inside a
Police say 23-year-old Aide Mendez killed her two children - 3-year-old Isaiah and 17-month-old Aliyah - and a cousin, 27-year-old Paul Medina. And that she shot her husband 33-year-old Eduardo Lopez and stabbed him before she killed herself.
Police say they discovered drugs inside the apartment.
At last report, Lopez was in critical condition.
At the family's home at the
Neighbor Jesus Gonzalez heard the gunshots and then banging on his front door. He looked outside.
"I see a woman with a long knife," Gonzales makes a stabbing motion, "and then I say 'Hey what happened?"
When Jesus shouted, he says Aide Mendez ran back into her apartment.
Her husband Eduardo Lopez told Jesus:
"He said my wife killed my cousin and she wants to kill my kids" Gonzalez told us.
Investigators found video on an iPad recorded just hours before the murders. It showed Mendez and the cousin smoking methamphetamine.
And neighbors said there was an argument between Mendez and her husband in the early morning hours before the killing. It woke George Arandules and his wife who live behind the family.
"My wife woke up to her screaming loud. She couldn't make out what she was saying, she was just screaming," Arandules said.
Friends say Mendez was troubled by the death of her first child - a daughter who succumbed to a medical condition in 2008. Neighbors say she would still buy presents for her late daughter and that this Saturday was either the late daughter's birthday or the anniversary of the little girl's death.
Friends stopped by to leave candles and stuffed animals for the two children who perished Sunday morning. They were too stunned and heartbroken to comment, unable to believe that the woman they knew as a doting mother could be capable of a mass killing.
A seven-year-old neighbor was staying at the apartment Saturday night. Police say she witnessed at least one of the murders. She was able to escape unharmed when Eduardo Lopez ran out the door.