In a shocking case of murder and infanticide Carol Coronado, 30, was arrested earlier this year on suspicion of murder at her home in Torrance, California. She stands accused of killing her three little girls, aged three, two and two-months old but has now pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
The woman’s mother found the three girls dead in a bed at the home with their mother Coronado beside them clutching a knife. Detectives said several knives were recovered at a bloody scene.
The alleged murders took place while Coronado’s husband was outside mowing the lawn and the devastated father was led out by police crying: ‘She killed my daughters.”
Police, at the time, did not release a motive for the killings but police officials said Coronado allegedly tried to cut her own wrists and was taken to hospital before being booked into jail. The children’s grandmother told a neighbor that her daughter had called earlier in the day and said that she was going crazy.
Now, she has pleaded not guilty:
Carol Ann Coronado, 30, was also charged with the attempted murder of her own mother in the indictment unsealed on Monday in Los Angeles, California.
Coronado entered the insanity plea in a county court on Monday afternoon and is due to return for a hearing in three weeks.
Authorities alleged Coronado killed her daughters – two-year-old Sophia, 16-month-old Yazmine and two-month-old Xenia – then tried to kill her own mother when she found them at the family home in Torrance on May 20.
The indictment contains special circumstances allegations including multiple murders that make her eligible for the death penalty.
At a previous hearing, Coronado’s attorney said she was suffering from post-partum depression. She is due to return to court on October 17.
In July, Coronado’s husband spoke out in her defense, saying that his wife’s undiagnosed condition was to blame for the tragedy.
The mother-of-three was taken to a mental hospital after she tried to take her own life by stabbing herself in the chest, according to police.
‘I’m not a doctor but I know for a fact that was that disease, and it wasn’t my wife,’ Rudy Coronado told NBC Los Angeles in early July.
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The grieving father revealed that there had been many warning signs before the murders but he did not know how to read them.
‘That’s the reason why we need to bring awareness to [postpartum depression] because I was never educated on nothing like this,’ Mr Coronado said. ‘I didn’t have a clue.’
He added that if it were not for the psychosis, his wife would not have hurt anyone ‘in a million years’.
Deputies responded to the home at 1000 block of West 223rd Street about 5:20 p.m. and “were met by family members who told the deputies that a mother had killed her children,” Sheriff’s Department officials said in a statement.
The victims were girls who ranged in age from 2 months old to 3 years old, authorities said. They were found in the same room of the small home.
