Man kills family, self, blames job loss

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A man who fatally shot his wife, five young children and himself Tuesday had earlier faxed a note to a TV station claiming the couple had just been fired from their hospital jobs and together planned the killings as a final escape for the whole family.

“Why leave our children in someone else’s hands,” Ervin Lupoe wrote in a letter posted late Tuesday on the KABC-TV Web site.

The station called police after receiving the fax, and a police dispatch center also received a call from a man who stated, “I just returned home and my whole family’s been shot.”

Officers rushed to the home in Wilmington, a small community between the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, about 8:30 a.m., apparently within minutes of the killings. Officers could still smell the gunshot residue in the air.

Although the fax asserted that Ana Lupoe planning the killings of the whole family, police Lt. John Romero said Ervin Lupoe was the suspect. A revolver was found next to his body.

Ana Lupoe’s body was found in an upstairs bedroom with the bodies of the couple’s twin 2-year-old boys. The bodies of an 8-year-old girl and twin 5-year-old girls were found alongside Ervin Lupoe’s in another bedroom. All were shot in the head, coroner’s Assistant Chief Ed Winter said.

It was the fifth mass death of a Southern California family by murder or suicide in a year. Police urged those facing tough economic times to get help rather than resort to violence.

“Today our worst fear was realized,” said Deputy Chief Kenneth Garner. “It’s just not a solution. There’s just so many ways you find alternatives to doing something so horrific and drastic as this.”

Ervin Lupoe removed three of the children from school about a week and a half ago, saying the family was moving to Kansas, the principal told KCAL-TV.

Kaiser Permanente Medical Center West Los Angeles released a statement confirming both Lupoe and his wife had worked there; both were medical technicians.

“It looks like they might have had grounds for his termination ... it wasn’t that he was laid off as a result of the economic situation,” police Capt. Billy Hayes said.

In his letter, Ervin Lupoe claimed he and his wife both had been fired.