• Fri, Feb 8 - 9:52 am ET

22-Year-Old Mom Of Three Tragically Shoots Her Children Before Committing Suicide

murder-suicideMayra Perez had to be under an immense amount of stress. She was 22 years old and had three children under the age of seven. It would be a huge responsibility and a ton of pressure. Tragically, the young mom decided that she could not bear it. Yesterday, Mayra Perez shot her three children, Neveah Morales, Erick Perez, and Isabel Perez, before turning the gun on herself.

For the oldest two children, the shots were fatal. The youngest, Isabel, was critically injured, but survived. She is an a coma and undergoing surgery.

At the Mommyish office, we cannot help but feel like these stories are becoming all too familiar. It seems like every day we read about another parent who finds the world too scary, the pressure too much, and they take their children with them when they go. There were the two teens in California over the weekend killed by their father in a murder-suicide. There was the four-person family in Atlanta earlier this week. There was the Tennessee man who killed his wife and children, also this week.

Over and over again, day after day, more young people are lost at the hands of their own parents, people who apparently see no way out of their desperate situations. And all we can do is sit back and sadly mourn the losses. We send up prayers and hug our own kids a little tighter and worry about what made these parents feel so hopeless.

Mayra Perez is the latest tragedy in a long line of tragedies that have been plaguing our country. Her children are the latest victims of gun violence, two more souls added to the growing tallies.

Thankfully, it sounds like little Isabel Perez has an extended family who will be there to support her in her recovery. Mayra’s brother, Tony Nuñez, told the press:

“Being the brother of the person who caused this tragedy, I wish I could say or express in words a ‘sorry.’ But what’s done is done. Whatever reason drove her to this, it’s going to be in God’s hands. He will be the judge of her.â€

 

For now, he said, his focus is on Isabel.

(Photo: Luis Louro/Shutterstock)

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  • guest

    “Mayra Perez is the latest tragedy in a long line of tragedies that have been plaguing our country. Her children are the latest victims of gun violence, two more souls added to the growing tallies. More »”

    These murders are not the result of gun violence exclusively like your clip states on the Mommyish home page and in your article. They are the tragic result of the mother’s inability to handle the stressors in her life and whatever else may be in play. If she had used poison, a club, a machete, a bathtub, whatever her weapon of choice you would not have stated ‘the latest is tub violence, machete violence, etc.’

    • LindsayCross

      They were victims of gun violence. Whether stating that fits in with your political beliefs or not really isn’t relevant. I did not say that their deaths were because of a lack of gun control or that these deaths means we need to have an assault weapons ban or that the presence of a gun was the only thing wrong with this situation. I said that they were killed by gun violence. And they were.

      I also mentioned that the mother had to be under a tremendous amount of stress and that this is a tragedy. But none of that changes the fact that yes… these children were shot with a gun and they died. That’s what “gun violence” is.

    • guest

      Totally agree with Lindsay’s reply. With so much focus on the gun issues, people are reading way too much into what someone writes about guns. The children were killed as a result of gun violence, plain and simple. There is nothing political about that statement unless it is taken out of context. I am not a gun advocate OR opponent. I have concerns on both sides of the fence. But I don’t see anywhere in this piece where Lindsay was pushing any kind of political agenda.

    • CMJ

      When you use a gun, it’s gun violence.

    • Lastango

      Nice rhetorical slight-of-hand. When using a gun involves violence, it’s violence that involved a gun. Guns are not violent.

    • CMJ

      Cool Story, Bro.

    • chickadee

      They are exclusively the result of gun violence, since the word ‘exclusively’ excludes any other weapon (by definition), and the mother shot her children. The mother could not handle stress so she shot herself and her children. Killing them with a gun. Because she had access to a gun.

      Guns are easier to use if you are interested in killing yourself or others. You don’t have to strike anyone, stab anyone, or touch anyone at all. The nature of a gun death removes the person from the act, at least in a tactile sense.

    • K.

      ” If she had used poison, a club, a machete, a bathtub, whatever her
      weapon of choice you would not have stated ‘the latest is tub violence,
      machete violence, etc.’”

      Ya know why it doesn’t say any of those things? Because there are a lot more people killed by guns than there are by machetes. If there WERE as many deaths caused by say, dropping anvils on people as there were death by guns, then we’d have the term “anvil-dropping violence.” Buuuuttt we don’t. We have a bunch of people getting killed by guns. Hence the term, “gun violence.”

      Sorry, truth hurts.

  • Lastango

    This study found that, of children killed by their mothers, 13% were shot with a firearm. The rest were killed by other means:

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9608698

    It also found that “psychotic women were eleven times more likely to kill their child with a weapon than their non-psychotic counterparts.” We really need to acknowledge the role mental illness plays in family murders, especially where a weapon is used. Other studies show that about 80% of women who killed their children “had been suffering from some sort of mental illness, such as schizophrenia or depression, at the time of the murder”.

    http://aabss.org/Perspectives2006/AABSS2006Article1CHAPMAN.pdf

    In Canada, parents used firearms to kill their children 13% of the time:

    http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/pubs/omc-ned/kill-tuer-eng.htm

    • LindsayCross

      Once again. The only point I made about guns in this piece is that the children and woman were killed with a gun. In general, I talked about the increased awareness surrounding these tragedies and that we’re seeing a lot of them lately. And how sad that is.

      I do believe that we need to address mental health in this country and make it easier for people who need help to get treatment.

    • chickadee

      And you should be calling attention to the number of gun deaths that tend to slip beneath the public consciousness simply because they aren’t headline-grabbing mass-murders. Well done.

    • Lastango

      At this point, after all these posts, your goals and motives are hardly a secret. Never one to waste a crisis, you will use whatever you can find to panic people about “guns”.

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