In March 2013, at a house on Paintbrush Street in Mesquite, in Dallas County, Texas, Angelica Vazquez shot and killed her husband Marcelo, forty-four, and their two children, Paulina, twenty-one, and Alejandro, eighteen, who was known as Alex. She then killed herself. She was forty-three.
The Dallas County Medical Examiner ruled the deaths a murder-suicide and classified the other three as homicides. Police said she had left no suicide note. No motive or reason for the shootings has ever been released.
Both children were at college. Alejandro was a student at Eastfield College and Paulina was at the University of North Texas, having previously attended Eastfield. The president of Eastfield announced their deaths to the college and opened its counselling service to students.
Two things about the timing sit oddly together in the reporting. Somebody called 911 on the Saturday to say they had heard gunshots. The four bodies were not found inside the house until the following Wednesday. Beyond that call and one earlier medical call, police said there had been no contact with the address.
Friends said she had recently undergone treatment for cancer. She had worked for the Mesquite Independent School District as a cafeteria aide until May 2012.
A memorial appeared at the family's mailbox, stuffed animals and flowers with a note giving the time of a service. The funeral for all four was held on the Sunday at a funeral home in Mesquite.
Sources give the date of the killings variously. This archive carries March 8, 2013; the contemporary reporting describes the bodies being discovered on a Wednesday, with the gunshots heard the previous Saturday. The entry gives the month rather than pick between them.
This is a single act rather than a series, and it is filed here under that qualification. The count is the three she killed; the fourth death is her own.