Los Angeles Police Department investigators work at a crime scene, where three children have been found dead inside a car parked outside an elementary school while a man found with them is in critical condition in South Los Angeles Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2015. Officer Jack Richter says the three children were declared dead at the scene while a man found with them was taken to a nearby hospital, also with stab wounds. His relationship to the children wasn’t immediately clear. AP
LOS ANGELES — A father repeatedly stabbed his three young sons to death with a knife in the back seat of their car outside a South Los Angeles elementary school Wednesday before it’s believed he turned the blade on himself, police said.
The father, said to be in his 30s, was found in his car bleeding from stab wounds to the chest, his dead sons in the back and a knife in the passenger seat. The boys, ages 8 to 12, were pronounced dead at the gruesome scene.
The father, whose name was not released, is the only suspect in the killings, police said. He was taken to a hospital in critical condition and will be arrested if he survives his wounds, Los Angeles Police Officer Matthew Ludwig said.
The motive was unclear and is being investigated. The father had no history of domestic violence charges or arrests, police said.
“These are horrific incidents,” police Chief Charlie Beck said. “These are incidents that have scarred not only a community but the first responders that have to handle them.”
“It is a sad day in LA,” he said.
The three boys did not attend the elementary school next to the crime scene, Beck said, but they are enrolled in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Beck said the boys’ mother is deceased and that their stepmother was safe and being interviewed by detectives.
It was unclear whether the boys lived with their father.
The deaths come as homicides are on the rise in Los Angeles. In August, 39 killings drove a year-to-date uptick in murders in the nation’s second-largest city, according to police statistics. The 39 killings in August are compared with 22 the previous month and 19 last August.