Cops: Killer was smoking meth

FRESNO, CALIF.

- Police say a woman who shot her two children, their father and a cousin in California's Central Valley and then committed suicide took video of herself on her iPad as she smoked methamphetamine several hours earlier.

The apparent murder-suicide by Aide Mendez, 23, began Sunday morning after an argument she had with the father of her two children, Eduardo Lopez, 33.

Lt. Mark Salazar, homicide commander for the Fresno Police Department, said that police arrived to find Lopez outside the Silver Lakes Apartment with knife and gunshot wounds.

Officers heard a shot from inside the apartment and discovered that Mendez had fatally shot herself and her two children, Aliyah Echeverria, 17 months, and Isaiah Echeverria, 3. She also shot and killed a cousin, Paul Medina, 27.

Lopez was hospitalized in critical condition.

Jesus Gonzalez, a neighbor, told KFSN-TV, an ABC affiliate in Fresno, that shortly before 7 a.m. on Sunday he heard gunshots and then a pounding on his door. He opened the door to find Lopez bleeding profusely.

"I opened the door and he fell in front of me, and I take him and I pull him inside," Gonzalez said. He said that before he could drag the man inside, the woman believed to be Mendez tried to pull him back outside again.

Gonzalez said he shouted at her, "Hey, what happened, what happened?" and she ran off.

"We do know that drugs played a key role, but we don't know to what extent," Salazar said. "She was seen prior to the shooting smoking methamphetamine. She recorded herself on an iPad showing her and Medina smoking meth. We know the power of meth."

Salazar said that the time stamp on the iPad video would have to be tested but that preliminary information indicated that it was recorded within a few hours of the murder.

"Her actions just seemed bizarre - her mannerism, the way she was moving her hands and her facial expressions," Salazar said, noting that other drugs may have been involved but that it would take weeks before the toxicology reports were complete.

A 7-year-old girl who was a family friend was staying overnight in the apartment, but escaped unharmed.

Authorities said yesterday that they had yet to piece together a motive but that family members reported that Mendez had lost a baby several years ago, and was still grieving over the loss. Police recovered three firearms in the apartment, two of them used.