Merced County Sheriff's Sgt. Tom Cavallero said Christine McFadden was returning from her morning walk shortly after 7 a.m. when she found her 17-year-old daughter lying dead in the hallway near the door of her bedroom.
McFadden, a veterinarian in Merced, then called police from a neighbor's house before returning with deputies to the gray ranch-style home to find her three other children and her estranged husband lying in separate bedrooms, Cavallero said.
"It looks like they had been sleeping," Cavallero said of the children.
The body of former Santa Clara County sheriff's deputy John Hogan was found in the bed of the master bedroom, holding the dead 5-year-old girl, Michelle Hogan, in his arms.
Melanie Willis, 17, and Stanley Willis, 15, were students at Golden Valley High School. Stuart Willis, 14, was an eighth grader at Our Lady of Mercy School.
Commander Bart Pazin of the Merced County Sheriff's Department said Hogan was a retired deputy from Santa Clara County.
Cavallero said McFadden left the house with a neighbor at 6 a.m. for their morning run and that she told deputies her estranged husband was not in the house when she left.
"I don't think anybody can pre-plan for this type of action," Pazin said. "Nobody could ever foresee something like this."
The shooting took place in the Robinson Estates, a small community on the east side of Merced near Bear Creek, where lawns are well manicured on half-acre lots.
"It is a very affluent residential area with custom homes," Cavallero said. "It is very nice, with single-family homes on big lots. It is very suburban."
Affects of social and moral breakdown, but hey, "it's constitutional."
This just occurred to me as I was putting my my post...
These stories seem to be popping up here on FR a lot lately. This topic is the theme of the
new Jennifer Lopez movie -- ENOUGH -- Self Defense Isn't Murder
Is some Freeper a publicity flak for Sony, and do these stories get put up to get the room humming harder prior to the new release?
Mark W.
There must be some reason the gun was not mentioned. I suspect it was a banned weapon that has been "removed" from Californians. At least in liberal utopia fantasy-land.