GRANDMA’S MESSAGE: WATCH OUT!
Says ‘be more observant,’ dad of slain kids ‘very upset’
The grieving grandmother of three young children found murdered along with their mother inside their West Brookfield home last week has a message for the community — “Watch out!”
“Join a community watch. Be more observant,” she told me from her home in nearby
Ware yesterday.
“She was loved by her relatives and we’re mad at the person who took them away,” the grandmother said of Sara Bermudez, 38, and her three children, Madison, 8, James, 6, and Michael, 2.
The woman declined to give her name but said she was the paternal grandmother.
“Watch out!” was her overriding message.
When asked how her son — the father of the children and Sara’s husband — was doing, she told me, “He’s very upset.”
Then, the grandmother closed the door.
West Brookfield police and the Worcester district attorney’s office provided no new updates yesterday about the horrific murders that has this small town on edge.
The bodies of the mother and three children were found in an upstairs bedroom at 10 Old Warren Road on Thursday afternoon after the cops were called there.
A half-dozen vehicles were parked in the driveway of the grey Cape-style house yesterday. There was a swing set and slide on the well-kept sprawling front lawn and someone had left a bundle of flowers. Bright orange “private property” signs were posted out front.
Tight-lipped investigators have released few details of the murders, but are calling on the public to keep an eye out for a discarded plastic yellow fuel can, which they believe is missing from the home. A law enforcement source has told the Herald the mother and children’s bodies had evidence of burns. Authorities believe they were killed Wednesday night or early Thursday.
Two of the slain children were students at West Brookfield Elementary School. There are extra counselors at the school all week, the superintendent wrote in a Facebook post to parents, and experts will be there tomorrow night to talk to families about trauma and loss.