Feds: Man charged with killing 3 had been deported twice

DES MOINES, IOWA >> A Guatemalan man who apparently entered the U.S. illegally after being deported twice has been charged with killing an Iowa woman and her two children.

Marvin Oswaldo EscobarOrellana, 31, made an initial court appearance Thursday in Des Moines, where the judge set his bond at $3 million cash and scheduled his next hearing for July 29. He is charged with three counts of first-degree murder and hasn’t entered a plea.

Escobar-Orellana was arrested Tuesday night in the fatal shootings of 29-yearold Rossibeth Flores-Rodriguez and her two children, 11-year-old Grecia Daniela Alvarado-Flores and 5-year-old Ever Jose Mejia-Flores. Police said Escobar-Orellana had been living at the family’s Des Moines home, but that investigators found no evidence that he had a personal relationship with them, aside from the living arrangement.

Escobar-Orellana called 911 after the shootings, authorities say. In a criminal complaint, police say that according to an unidentified witness, Escobar-Orellana shot Flores-Rodriguez during an argument and then went inside the family’s condo and shot the children, the Des Moines Register reported.

Escobar-Orellana gave investigators a different version of events. He said FloresRodriguez killed the children and that he shot her in self-defense, police say in the complaint.

During his hearing, Escobar-Orellana asked the Polk County Associate Judge Becky Goettsch through a Spanishlanguage interpreter why he was charged with all three killings, when he only killed one person — and that in selfdefense. But police say in the complaint that ballistic evidence supports the witness’ account of what happened.