Mother charged in deaths of 3 children
LOS ANGELES — A California woman has been charged with killing her three young children in Los Angeles earlier this month, prosecutors said Monday.
Liliana Carrillo, 30, is charged with three counts of murder, with an allegation of using a knife as a deadly and dangerous weapon against her youngest child, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said Monday in a news release. It was not immediately clear if she had an attorney who could comment on her behalf.
Carrillo admitted to drowning her 3-year-old daughter Joanna, her 2-year-old son Terry and 6-month-old daughter Sierra during a jailhouse interview with KGETTV. The attack occurred April 10 in the Reseda neighborhood of Los Angeles; Carrillo’s arraignment has not yet been scheduled.
Carrillo told the TV station that she had hugged, kissed and apologized as she drowned her children to save them from what she said would be a lifetime of sexual abuse.
She said she wanted to “protect” her kids from their father amid a bitter custody battle.
“I did it as softly, I don’t know how to explain it, but I hugged them and I kissed them and I was apologizing the whole time,” she told the TV station. “I loved my kids.”
The father and Carrillo’s ex-boyfriend,
Erik Denton, who lives in Porterville, were in a custody battle with Denton seeking custody of the children. The family lived in Porterville until the end of February.
Denton wrote in court papers seeking custody that she is delusional and it was unsafe for their children to be around her.
Carrillo is currently in
a Kern County jail on $2 million bail. She’s accused of fleeing L.A. after the attacks and was arrested later that day in the Ponderosa area, after allegedly committing a carjacking in Kern County. She has pleaded not guilty to the carjacking-related offenses.
It was not immediately clear when she could be extradited to LA.