Town reels after family deaths
Posted on 07/18/2002 1:11:15 AM PDT by MeekOneGOP
Town reels after family deaths
Couple's divorce: One last meeting, one unexpected tragedy
07/18/2002
HUDSON OAKS - After months spent dissolving a 13-year marriage, Manuel Perez and his estranged wife faced one last meeting. Mr. Perez was to see Dee Etta Perez at the couple's Parker County home at 10 a.m. Tuesday, just after attorneys tied up most of the loose ends in their divorce. Even the list of things he was to gather there had been set by the court. Among them some household items, a family crucifix and sports memorabilia.
Several hours later, Mr. Perez called 911.
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"I've been shot in the back by my wife," Mr. Perez told an emergency operator, according to an arrest-warrant affidavit in the case. "The children are there and possibly dead."
Police said they forced their way into the silent home through the back door and found the body of the oldest child, 10-year-old Sergio, on the top of a set of bunk beds. His siblings, 9-year-old Diego and 4-year-old Bianca, were lying together on the bottom bunk.
Mrs. Perez, who was kneeling when she died, was found on the floor of the master bedroom. A gun was found nearby.
The shootings rocked the pastoral calm of the Diamond Oaks subdivision.
"This is a very beautiful, rural area. Everyone in this little town is just devastated," Hudson Oaks Police Chief Ray Riley said. "We've got people going door-to-door praying for one another."
On Wednesday, as the sun tucked behind the wooded hills, residents mourned the family.
BRAD LOPER / DMN Flowers were placed in the Perez yard in Hudson Oaks as residents mourned the tragedy. "There are still just so many unanswered questions," Police Chief Ray Riley said. |
By Wednesday evening, flowers, stuffed animals and balloons were nestled into a pine tree in a garden near the home's front door.
Most everyone who knew something about the couple friends, attorneys, even the judge in the case said the dissolution of their marriage did not seem contentious.
But some bitterness appeared to run below the surface.
Court records show that when Mr. Perez filed for divorce in January, he sought, and was granted, a restraining order against his wife.
Mrs. Perez, in turn, had accused her husband of cruelty and adultery and sought her own restraining order.
How those apparently dueling claims contributed to the violence at the home Tuesday remains a mystery.
"There are still just so many unanswered questions," Chief Riley said Wednesday afternoon as his officers cleared their crime scene and awaited a medical examiner's ruling on the deaths. "We have one victim who's still alive, and we need to be able to talk to him. This has taken its toll on all of us out here."
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Dr. Nizam Peerwani, the Tarrant County medical examiner, said Wednesday that he had completed the autopsies on Mrs. Perez and the children and would release the results Thursday.
Chief Riley said this department is trying to sort out what happened in the home from the time Mr. Perez arrived about 10:30 a.m. until the time that he called 911 and reached the Parker County Sheriff's Department about 1:15 p.m.
Police said they spoke with Mr. Perez at the scene and, though wounded, he shared part of his account of the incident before being taken to the hospital.
Officials said Mr. Perez reported that he heard two more shots after fleeing the home.
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Court records show that Mr. Perez was to be directed to pay child support and had arranged to call the children at 5 p.m. each day.
Officials with Child Protective Services said they would conduct an investigation but have no history with the family.
"We are working the case as a child death," CPS spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said. "A child homicide by a parent is the ultimate abuse."
E-mail lfox@dallasnews.com
He did the autopsies on the Clinton/Reno victims from the massacre at the Branch Davidian compound. The videotapes he took at the scene before the bodies were removed were confiscated by the FBI and never returned to help him with the autopsy reports.... they disappeared and were never seen by investigators of FBI conduct later.
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