HUDSON OAKS, Texas – An 8-month-old girl survived what police are calling a murder-suicide: A young mother who may have been depressed apparently hanged four of her small daughters and herself in a closet using pieces of clothing and sashes.
“It’s horrendous. That’s all I can say,” Parker County Sheriff Larry Fowler said Tuesday.
The woman was identified as Gilberta Estrada, 25. Authorities did not immediately identify the children, ages 5, 3 and 2, who were killed.
After Estrada failed to show up for work, her sister, who lived nearby, forced her way into the locked residence in the Oak Hills mobile home park, about 25 miles west of Fort Worth.
The sheriff said the sister rescued the infant when she realized the baby girl dangling in the closet was still alive. The infant was listed in good condition at a Fort Worth hospital, Fowler said.
The sheriff said the hangings appeared to be murder-suicide because the trailer’s doors were locked from the inside and a relative said the woman had been depressed.
The young mother and her girls were last seen alive Monday evening, he said.
The sheriff said Estrada had won a temporary restraining order in August against Gregorio Rodriguez, who was believed to be the father of the infant and some of the other children, after an attack on Estrada.
The sheriff said Estrada and Rodriguez had stopped living together in February. Authorities said there was no evidence that Rodriguez abused the girls.
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