Authorities in a Phoenix suburb found two children dead Saturday morning in an apartment after a woman told an officer she heard voices telling her to kill her children, police said.
Officers went to her apartment in the 4100 block of S. Mill Avenue and found a 9-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy dead with “obvious signs of trauma,” said Sgt. Steven Carbajal, a Tempe police spokesman.
The mother, who stopped a Tempe police officer at about 7 a.m. tomorrow near a police station, was taken into custody and detectives are questioning her, Carbajal said in a statement. At the moment the identities have not been released.
The police revealed that hours earlier they had received a call denouncing a domestic dispute involving a married couple in the same apartment.
According to Carbajal, the couple was separated and there were no arrests. The children were safe in bed at that time and at that time there was no apparent reason to call agency personnel for the care of minors.
“There did not appear to be an immediate threat to the children,” the spokesperson said. “Parents, couples, argue and disagree, and have issues that come up” that usually don’t require that kind of intervention.
Square, a mother of three and an educator, said she no longer feels safe in the neighborhood.
Carbajal confirmed that the woman being questioned is the mother of the minors and that her husband is the father of the children. He added that the police were doing everything to support the father.
Carbajal classified the incident as “tragic.”
“It is unfortunate that 9- and 7-year-olds who depend on their parents, especially their mother, to take care of them have been involved in something so tragic,” Carbajal said in an interview.
The officers who found the children dead are receiving therapy.
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“Many of the officers who answered that call have children, and even those who do not, we see many tragedies throughout our careers. But you can’t prepare for something like this, ”Carbajal said.
The police officers who discovered the bodies of the children were not the same ones who came to the apartment just after midnight to attend to the complaint of a domestic dispute. The children’s father was not in the apartment when officers returned and found the children dead.