(UPDATE) Mother poisons 3 children then kills self--police
By Abigail Kwok, Niña Catherine Calleja
INQUIRER.net, Southern Luzon Bureau
First Posted 10:04:00 09/09/2008
Filed Under: Crime
MANILA, Philippines -- A mother killed her three children and later herself through poisoning after midnight Monday in Magdalena, Laguna, police said Tuesday morning.
Chief Superintendent Ricardo Padilla, regional director of Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, and Quezon) Philippine National Police (PNP) and Senior Inspector Raul Sandoval, Magdalena police chief, said Marjorie, 4; Margareth, 3; and MJ, 2 were forced by their mother Janeth Ponce, 32 to drink the bottle of liquid toilet bowl cleaner at their house in Barangay (village) Salasad at around 1 a.m.
Janeth afterwards drank the poison to kill herself.
All four were rushed to the Magdalena Provincial Hospital but the three children were declared dead on arrival. Ponce was admitted to the emergency room but died shortly afterwards, Padilla said.
Sandoval said the suicide note that they found in the victims' house made them believe that the mother killed her children and herself because of poverty.
In her suicide note, however, Janeth was asking her relatives to take good care of her children.
Police added that the relatives of Ponce refused to subject the mother and her children to an autopsy.
Police will also contact the husband of Ponce, who is a construction worker in Manila.
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